


Dancing Barefoot

by ScooterSister



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Angst and Humor, Aunt-Niece Relationship, Bounty Hunters, Drugs, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Physical Disability, Prosthesis, Romance, Smuggling, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:30:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4591326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScooterSister/pseuds/ScooterSister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alma Jae Eccles is a transtibial amputee and niece to Maude Eccles that has just landed back in the Shores after an extended absence. She spends much of her time carving sculptures from the soap that she makes to aid in the smuggling operations of various Blaine County undesirables. While she grapples with day to day life, she finds herself in the orbit of Trevor Philips, who was contracted by Maude to locate her and figure out what she's up to. Before long, she finds herself developing an odd fondness for the pain in her ass that is Trevor Philips as they become entangled in a series of misadventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's kind of soon after the last story, but what can I see? I don't sleep much and writing my own stuff gets tricky. This greases the wheels. This story is dedicated to my mum, who provided the basis for Alma's character. Though I can never fully understand what it's like to be her, she's always been very open and honest with me about her feelings.

Maude Eccles was keeping one eye on the exceptionally pretty puddle of purple and orange sweeping across the dusky horizon, and the other eye on her computer screen. She'd earned five minutes of appreciating what the morally fickle Lord had gifted the inhabitants of this planet. She'd spent the entire afternoon outsourcing her backlog of bounties to confused twenty-year-olds that would likely end up on her roster of bail jumpers before the year was out, delegating the business of snagging people that didn't want to pay their debts to society. It was a healthy living.

For the past hour, though, she had been scouring her electronic resources to track down a different kind of target altogether. One that she wasn't interested in turning over for prosecution. This here was an unpleasant business. She hadn't seen or spoken to Alma Jae in almost three years, but if the word around Blaine County held any weight, it sounded like their overdue reunion was nigh.

Alma Jae AKA A.J. AKA _Just Alma_ AKA _Gimpy O'Gorgeous_ (according to certain young bucks around these parts that quickly learned to shut their mouths if they slapped her with that moniker) didn't maintain any social media accounts, which made it difficult to see what types of mindless, vapid activities that she might be up to. She was barely thirty, after all. Most of her peers would have been posting pictures of their food and complicated cantina cocktails or their sun-kissed extremities. But if Alma was enjoying a listless, hedonistic existence, Maude wasn't going to find out through Life Invader or Bleeter.

She took a sip of her Sprunk over Kentucky bourbon and returned her attention to the computer. The police blotter didn't turn up any entries for anyone matching Alma Jae's description in the last several years. Though, Maude was treated to a trip down memory lane when she found an archived ledger from fifteen years ago. _Female, white, juvenile_ Alma had been present when her moron of a dune buggy demon boyfriend had set fire to the perimeter of a grain elevator in Grapeseed. Maude had forgiven her that little transgression then since it had been less than a year since her accident. Kids had a way of acting up in response to trauma. Now, here she was, fifteen years later, wishing that her niece was only committing light arson instead of what she might be doing if the rumor mill around these parts was to be believed.

Maude heard the low thrumming of an engine coming up her drive then. She turned to see the big, clunky, red Canis barreling into her little cul-de-sac. Trevor slowed down for most of the drive up, probably heeding Maude's request that he try not to kick up so much dust when he came to visit. But he quickly defeated the purpose by gunning it the rest of the way up and slamming on his brakes in a failed bid to perform a sidewinder the rest of the way.

Maude couldn't help but adore Trevor despite his various flaws, many of them felonious and psychopathic in nature. But the guy had mommy issues, and Maude, being seventeen odd years his senior, had quickly garnered his affections when she met him a decade ago. What else could she do but return them? It's not as though she had a flock of guys beating down her door waiting to sing her praises and dole out their affections like candy.

Trevor hopped out of his truck and began striding toward her, rubbing his gums with his forefinger to dislodge something. He was too muscular to be lanky, she figured, but he moved like a languid spider with an attitude problem. He saw her and relaxed his gate, showing her two rows of teeth as he hopped up onto her porch.

 _“Helloooo, Maude!”_ he practically chirped.

“There you are, handsome,” she returned.

He dragged a vinyl chair to the end of the table and plopped down on it backwards.

“So, what are we lookin' at? White collar criminal pilfering profits from his start up? Two-bit racketeers?”

Maude took heed of Trevor's zealotry in being called on to do her bidding. It was true, Trevor would do just about anything for a buck, but she was pretty sure that money wasn't his god so much as chaos was, so she decided to pump the brakes on it, holding up her hand do indicate that he needed to do the same.

“I'm not on the hunt for a deadbeat this time, Trevor. This is a little more personal.”

Trevor growled and wriggled his brow at her as he bit the corner of his mouth. “Oh, Maude. I've just been dying for you to let me in to your _personal life,”_ he cooed at her.

She snickered at the offbeat double-entendre before pulling up Alma's picture and turning the screen toward him.

“Well, you're in luck. You finally get to see the skeletons in my closet.”

Trevor glanced at the screen and quirked his face to indicate that he, rightly, had no idea what was being asked of him. The photo wasn't a mugshot, but a candid of Alma Jae at the last Christmas that they'd spent together, sipping a nog only a month or so before she'd taken her hasty leave of Blaine County.

“What do we have here?” Trevor asked, plainly intrigued. Maude had no way of telling if his curiosity was a general one or if he was simply displaying his typical interest in anyone who owned human parts. _A hole is a goal,_ read his LifeInvader page.

“This here's my niece, Alma Jae.”

“You're niece, huh?” Trevor said. “What'd she do, forget to call you on your birthday?”

“Try three of them,” Maude replied dryly. “She hasn't shown her face around here in that many years.”

Trevor leaned back and pulled a _that smarts_ face, adding a little _oof_ sound to indicate his sympathy. “The ones we love the most are always the first to leave us in their dust,” he said, sounding a little disingenuous in his bitterness. Maude wasn't entirely sure that Trevor had any experience in that arena. She'd never heard about any of his people.

“We had a falling out a little after this picture was taken, Trevor. A disagreement about the wisdom behind her life choices. She took off east, ended up in Vice City as I understand it. But a little bird told me that she's been back for weeks and has neglected to come and see her auntie.”

He hummed ambiguously before adding “That's no good. What'dya want me to do? Stuff her in a potato sack and leave her on your door step?” he asked, punctuating it with a chuckle more befitting of an adolescent than a man in his forties.

Maude glared at him and he instantly deferred to her seriousness.

“Trevor,” she groaned.

He held his hands up defensively. “Hey, sorry, just trying to add a little, uh, levity to the situation.”

“I need for you to be gentle with her,” she drawled. “I raised her up from the time she was six years old. It bears repeatin' that she ain't like my other charges.”

“Well, she sure ain't appreciative of what you did for her. What was it, huh?” he asked. Perhaps he really was interested in her _skeletons_. “Did her folks die in a house fire or somethin'? Did she wander the desert aimlessly? Was she raised by coyotes before you found her?”

Maude rolled her eyes. He loved a good story, especially if it was gruesome.

“She's my brother's daughter. He brought her by for a visit, left her with me, and then disappeared. He's most certainly dead by now. That sensational enough for you, sweetness?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he remarked sarcastically.

“Anyway,” Maude began lest the point of this exchange leave her, “I need you to find out where she's hidin' and bring her to me without hurting her. You think you can do that for me?”

Trevor sighed deeply and gazed at her through the corner of his eye. “Well, that all depends, Maudey, ma dear...”

“You net five thousand if you bring her to me unbound and without a scratch, Trevor.”

He stood up then, his shoulders boxy with defensive angst.

“Hey, it ain't about money! I just wanna know why you can't go do this yourself. _Obviously_ there's a reason you're outsourcing. Now, I'm not afraid of a challenge or nothin', but usually when I hear from you, I get more details.”

Maude wasn't terribly keen on getting into her family history with Trevor, but she knew that he wasn't exactly a _no questions asked_ kind of guy, so she'd braced herself for it, more or less.

“I told you, handsome. She and I didn't part on great terms. If she's back in the area and she still ain't come to see me, that means that she's still sore at her dear ol' Auntie Maude. I need you to find her and, er...ply her into giving me an audience. Without using violence or threats.”

Trevor nodded and muttered an mmhm to indicate that he understood.

 _“However,”_ Maude continued, “if, when you find her, she's still shacked up with a sleazy, ravenous python of a landscaper by the name of Piers Brantley, feel free to maim him in any way you see fit.”

Trevor chuckled. “Oh, Maude,” he said with a hint of fire in his voice. “I never knew you could be so murderous. You're usually on your side of the law, no?”

“You still haven't told me if you want the contract, Trevor,” she said.

Trevor sauntered breezily off of her porch, hitting the dust with a thunk before turning around and meeting her gaze again. “Sure, I'll take it.”

Maude didn't want for her relief to be so palpable, but she was pretty sure that she'd just lost ten pounds of worry. Normally, she wouldn't wish Trevor on her worst enemy, much less the one person that she loved more than life itself. But she needed someone with muscle and charisma. And one or both of those things was at a sore deficit in Blaine County.

“I would be forever in your debt, sweet thing,” she told him with a smile, which he returned.

He started walking back toward his Canis before he turned around again.

“So, do you have any idea where I might find this Alma? I mean, it's great that you supply pictures and all, but it's kinda hard to pick someone her age out with all the hipsters running around.” If he wasn't so thoughtful in his delivery, Maude might have thought that he was pulling her leg. She looked upward, studying the planks in her porch to find something that he could go off of.

“Well, she likes to read, so you could try the library. She's young, so if she's feeling social, she might be at a bar...”

Trevor was drawing circles in the sand with his boot heel.

“Uh huh,” replied absently. “And how do I pick her out from the rest of the hip young crowd, Maude? I mean, no offense, but she sounds like she could blend pretty easily among the lost souls that got priced out of L.S.”

Maude leaned forward and clasped her hands, resting her chin on her fists.

“You saw her photo, Trevor.”

“Yeah, that was taken before she bailed on you. She might'a bleached her hair or gotten sleeves or something. I need something more concrete.”

“She's an amputee,” she said plainly.

Trevor looked up to her slowly, narrowing his eyes as though he was trying to figure out if she was fucking with him or not. “Huh?”

“She lost her leg in an accident fifteen years ago. Girl your looking for's got a prosthetic right leg,” she said, making a cutting gesture at her knee. “I'm bettin' that'll narrow your search criteria a bit.”

Trevor looked up and to the side as though he was working out a math problem in his head or trying to work out an otherwise difficult problem. After a moment, he raised his finger, ready to fire off a followup question, one that Maude had no doubt would be completely improper.

“Go on, Trevor,” she said blankly.

Trevor halted whatever line of questioning was trying to form and stood at attention, giving her a salute before he turned around and got into his car.

When he had rode off and was completely out of view, dust trails and all, Maude said a silent prayer that she wasn't making a terrible mistake. She didn't really know what else to do. Of course she could have gone looking for her herself. But for as much as this place was overflowing with hippies and monied kids that had moved over this way from the cities to be ironic or whatever their game was, there was still a tight-knit community to be found. If she went asking after Alma to any of her friends, she would know in no time flat and she'd find a way to dodge her. She was always good at crawling into holes like a spooked tarantula. And Maude needed to clear this up. It was one of the only things holding her back. She didn't have any ill intentions, she just wanted to know that if she found out tomorrow that she wasn't long for this world that she could go out on a high note, knowing that there wasn't any bad blood between her and her niece. Plus, if she played her cards right, she might get Alma to admit that she had been an absolute fuckin' brat about the whole thing, and that would make Maude's entire existence.

She slammed her laptop shut and leaned back, taking another sip of her drink and savoring the feeling of dewy film that was left on the outside of the highball glass. The sunset sure was pretty tonight. It might have been the dog days of summer, but at least there was something to show for it in the horizon. Maude hoped then that she'd have something to show for siccing Trevor Philips on her beloved niece. And that he could leverage his position as the devil himself to keep her out of the clutches of the malignant people that would pull her into the ground without thinking twice about it.

…

Trevor didn't usually pay a whole lot of mind to _other peoples' projects_ for him. If he had the time or if he was feeling saucy, he might help someone make a buck or take someone out or what have you. But he'd been burned enough times while trying to help people that he knew who was A-1, number fucking one. It was him.

Of course, no matter how much he reminded himself of that, there was still that outcropping in his merciful heart that always had room for outliers. Maude was one of them. The thought of saying no to whatever she had asked him to do had never crossed his mind and it didn't even give him pause when she'd given him the assignment: to gently capture her wayward niece and only child she could ever hope to have at her age and with her perpetual bachelorette status.

It was only now that he was starting to have second thoughts. Like maybe he should have told her to pawn this off on someone else because he wasn't used to taking anyone by passivity. Sure, he thought of himself as being highly coercive, but there were limits, and young women had a way of running away from him as soon as they'd mistakenly pegged him as a mental homeless man.

It wasn't that he didn't think he could do it if he put forth a little effort and guile, it's just that he didn't want to now. It sounded boring. If Maude had given him to go ahead to drug her, throw her in a sack, and toss her onto the front porch of Maude's humble abode- as he'd originally suggested,- it might have felt more his speed. But nnnnooooooooo, this girl was damaged and legless and he had to be tactful and wily. Psh. Boring.

He stared at the picture on his phone that Maude had sent him of what looked like a very unfledged young chick with light auburn hair, squinting her eyes in an exaggerated way, pointing a cinnamon stick at the camera threateningly while her mouth was covered up with a glass full of whitish liquid. The sweater she wore was of the ugly Christmas variety. Looking at it, one couldn't really figure how the person in this photo would be so pissed off such a short time later that she would skip town for fucking _Florida._ Gross.

He closed the file with the photo and immediately pulled up Lester's entry in his contact list. If he was going to go in soft, he needed some heavy lifting done first. The phone rang three times before his frienemy answered.

 _“Trevor,”_ Lester drawled, sounding none too pleased that Trevor had interrupted whatever perverted enterprise he'd been undertaking at that moment.

“Lest-ah the molest-ah!”

_“If you called to taunt me, I'll tell you that I think I got my fill of that bullshit when you were still showing your face around here regularly.”_

_Yikes._ The little fucker was testy today. Trevor had probably called him while he was jerking off. “There's more polite ways to tell someone you miss them, Lester,” he said, wasting a grin on a couple of haggard old rednecks that walked by him on their way into the liquor store. Trevor glared at the two old men before hoisting one of his feet up onto the bench where he sat.

 _“What's this about, Trevor,”_ Lester all but whined.

“Hey, hey, hey, now, little buddy. Now, I know that you're a bitter, unrefined shut-in with no social life to speak of, but when someone takes the time to call you, there are certain _conventions_ to be followed,” Trevor said in his mock wounded voice followed by a condescending chaser.

_“Oh for fuck...”_

“Like at least pretending that you're pleased to hear from them and that they're not putting you out by deciding to include a conversation with you in their busy day!”

He heard Lester sigh on the other end. _“Do you need information on someone?”_ he asked defeatedly.

Trevor ignored the fact that Lester was obviously trying to rudely abridge their conversation. _“Yepperoo,_ Lester buddy. Close out of whatever x-rated materials are on your browser and-”

 _“Shut up and give me a name!”_ Lester barked. There's just no reaching some people, Trevor thought to himself before realizing that he didn't really want to talk to Lester all that much, either. “Name is Alma Eccles. A-L-M-A E-C-C-L-E-S. About thirty years old, missin' a leg...”

_“Got it. Alma Jae Eccles. Born March twenty second, 1984 in some outdated hospital in some podunk town in Kansas to two people with even more rednecky names then the one they gave her. Came under the legal guardianship of one Maude Eccles in 1990. Became a victim of a hit and run in '99. Detained the following year as an accessory to arson...Look, you want me to send this stuff to ya? There's a lot of shit here.”_

“Yeah, that'll be fine,” Trevor said, a little dazed at having this girl's spotty past recited to him like this. He had a tendency to form pretty comprehensive pictures of people in his head when he had only a small amount of information given to him. And Lester had just kind of blown his image of a spoiled, angsty nit in Maude's hair fleeing her provincial life for a different one. A little more muddy, now and he couldn't figure out what it was in that short history that he'd been given that had made him change his mind.

 _“What do you want with this chick, anyway?”_ Lester asked, sounding more than a little detached. _“She seduce you and then steal your rock or something?”_ He chuckled at his own joke before descending into an asthmatic wheeze.

“No, fucker, this is serious. I'm tracking her down for a friend.”

 _“Well, let's hope your friend isn't ill-intentioned. This young lady's seen some hard knocks in her day,”_ Lester said, trailing off.

Trevor felt himself grimace, both at Lester's editorializing, as well as something else even more bothersome to him. “You're _still_ looking at her file, ya perv? This ain't a dating service, pal!”

 _“You asked me to look for you!”_ Lester shot back defensively.

Trevor didn't choose to ignore the bare wisdom in that statement so much as his brain decided for him. “Whatever, weirdo, just send me what you got and if you see any new activity while you're creeping on her, make sure I know about it before your boner does,” Trevor trilled before hanging up the phone.

He rose from the bench, newly-acquisitioned liquor bottle in hand and prepared to head back to his casa for a preliminary booze-fest before he had to get to work outside his wheelhouse of absolute chaos.

Man, what a pain in the ass. He'd have to remember to tell this _Alma_ what a pain she was turning out to be. Maude knew everything about everyone that she was looking for, but she couldn't wrangle an orphan. An orphan with one leg, no less. And now he was the one that would have to step outside his comfort zone and put a lid on his ways. All so he could make his favorite ol' bounty hunting gal happy.

_Well, if it makes Maude happy..._

…

Alma stood over a big stockpot full of viscous liquid, mindlessly moving the burr blender in wide circles with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Sometimes, she would break up the monotony by moving it in time with the dozy, thick guitar riffs coming over the radio, but it overworked the nerve running up her forearm, so she went back to moving in her slow wide circles to put the burden back onto her shoulders and biceps. She blew a piece of auburn hair out of her face, sending the cigarette into the unrefined soap mixture.

“Fuck me,” she muttered to herself, tentatively sticking her gloved fingers into the pot to retrieve it. She tossed the now-waxy cigarette butt to the side and surveyed the damage. _At least it doesn't have to be pretty,_ she thought to herself as she gave the batch three more thoughtful stirs in an effort to blend the ash in with the rest of it. She was pleased that she wouldn't have to field any customer complaints over this, seeing as how it would be going in with a metric fuck ton of soap bars full off coffee grounds to throw off the dogs – if there were any dogs, that is.

She peppered the mixture with some nauseatingly flowery-smelling oils before hoisting the pot up with a grunt and pouring it slowly into the molds she had lined up at the end of her work table. She precariously threw some towels over each one before hobbling over to throw her materials into the deep basin full of soapy water behind her and peeling off her gloves. When she'd tossed those into the trash, she made a show of dusting off her hands for nobody but herself, a kind of ritual that she'd adopted to signal to her that work time was done.

Walking back to the little house adjacent to her workshop – which was functionally similar to a carriage house, reserved for the Blaine County gentry, no doubt- she stopped a minute to take in the stark beauty and decay around her. It was a full moon night. Super pretty, but also a little cruel seeing as how the best thing about the dark was that it sheltered us from being reminded of our surroundings that torment us in the daylight.

The mountains were especially gorgeous. High as they were majestic, lined with that pretty silver kiss of the full-moon, she let herself remember suddenly how claustrophobic they'd made her feel when she was growing up here. How she'd found a way to project the blame for all the bleak shit that had punctuated various personal zeitgeists in her life onto those mountains. They were encasing her, she'd figured. Only now did she know that that wasn't true. The only thing limiting her and cutting her off from the world were her noxious responses to personal tragedy. She could have gone most anywhere to escape that feeling. Where she chose to go, the land of gators, retirees, and washed-up drug lords, Vice City, did little to off-set the tiny aching in her heart that had lived there fucking always.

She could still kick herself for going to that place. All she'd gained from that fucking little misadventure was the helpful knowledge that if she spent too long out of air-conditioning in oppressively humid conditions, her prosthetic would be so full of sweat that the smell could repulse even her. That and a nasty breakup.

She couldn't believe that she could ever miss San Andreas. The places down south, closer to L.S., had always seemed oddly unattainable to her provincial sensibilities. She was horribly mistaken to think that Vice City would be much better. Sometimes, when she was still down there, she would take a weekend to visit the wilder, swampier places just so she could hear the down-home accent of bayou folk, of which the Blaine County dialect was a shoddy facsimile. It always brought her an odd comfort until someone pulled a knife on her or drunkenly confessed an incidence of patricide to her. _The secret recipe to my family's Everglade Marinade died with my daddy,_ that one woman with the shark-tooth necklace had told her. The very thought sent shivers down Alma's spine.

Alma made her way slowly up the landing and made for the door knob when something caught her eye. She looked to her right to see what it was. A vehicle. A vehicle that she'd never seen parked there before. Granted, it wasn't exactly odd to see rando vehicles parked in this area at all hours of the night. She wouldn't have to good fortune to be put up there if it wasn't a hotbed for low-level drug dealers. But this vehicle...Eh, something seemed funny about it.

It had been a fine, hardy off-road vehicle in its day, no doubt about it. But now its red exterior was more than a little bit pockmarked and rusty. Alma got the feeling that it had probably been witness to some adequately fucked up things in its day. It...well, it exuded something. An energy, perhaps?

Alma wasn't one for hippy dippy shit about chakras and lycras and whatever else the people in those hippy camps around here were always on about. But she'd always been able to sense _offness._ Not that it did her any fucking good. Even when her senses went rogue on her, she usually followed through with whatever plans she'd had before she started feeling like she should stay home and curl up with a nice, light Russian novel. And she usually paid for it. In friendships, in freedom, and, in once case, a limb.

She took a deep breath and stared at the car. She thought she could make out the top of a head poking up over the driver's side door, but it disappeared as quickly as she registered it. She shook the thought off. If she was going to do what she was doing to pay for a new prosthetic and keep herself afloat until she figured out her next move without losing her mind, she needed to figure out to discern between a real threat and a perceived one. All she wanted to do was get through the duration of her contract without getting blood on her hands.

Obviously, she wasn't exactly putting out good vibes into the world. She was doing some straight up nefarious shit and probably contributing to the downfall of many, many lost souls in the process. But she didn't know what else to do. The Americans With Disabilities Act, for as much of a message it was supposed to send, didn't make it easy for someone like her to get it across to people that she was like anyone else. They saw what was missing before they saw what was there. And she couldn't be sneaky about it when someone asked her if she could lift fifty pounds on a job interview. Of course, she _could_ lift fifty pounds, easy, but her foolhardy honesty always betrayed her when they asked if she needed any special _accommodation. Yes,_ she would tell the recruiter, _is the rest of your workforce capable of not treating me like I'm made of porcelain or like they might catch **limblessness** if they see that I have one less extremity than they?_

Plus, her residual limb was crying out to her to fit it with a new colonnade, which her insurance was reluctant to provide without her jumping through way too many fucking hoops and degrading herself. She was sick and fucking tired of being so precarious with her time and dignity for a bunch of heartless dick bags. So here she was, hoping that she could delude herself into believing that she could every make up for all the the shit she was putting out into the world.

 _I bet that Canis could still kick some ass out at Cassidy Creek,_ she thought to herself as she shoved into her house.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long. Of course, maybe you don't care, but I'm apologizing anyway. So here's this chapter. I hope you like it. As always, your words fuel me, my lovelies.

Roughly four days had passed since Trevor had pinpointed Alma's location with Lester's help. She was staying in a stucco house of disputed ownership, keeping weird hours with the curtains to her weird little shed drawn, and vacillating between conspiracy radio and classic rock. Twice, he'd gotten close enough to hear what she was listening to, sneaking up to the perimeter of the shed and peeking in the bottom of the curtains. All he'd been able to see was her leg and the likeness of her leg, clad in a denim skirt, carrying her to and fro across a work bench. He couldn't make out fuck all else besides the sound of her belting out the lyrics to the songs she listened to with less than perfect pitch.

Then he'd retreat back to his truck to watch her over the top of the driver's side door as she walked back to her house, always stealing a glance back in his direction. For as much as he'd been watching her, he still had no fucking clue what she looked like up close. She was just a collage of fragmented features. Leg(s), full-body silhouette topped by a nondescript mop of auburn hair, the hue only made visible by the moonlight. Still a goddamn mystery, she was. That mystery served a dual purpose, simultaneously intriguing and repulsing him. He always did love creeping around, but since it went against his nature not to blow into a place and make his presence _duly_ fucking known, it also pissed him off.

 Apart from the small amount of internal strife that this little side-project was causing, the distraction was also costing him money. The new crop of Lost MC was back at it again, trying to pull his empire out from under him. Well, okay, maybe they weren't _actively_ trying to cause his undoing, but their movements were creating unnecessary competition in the marketplace, and Trevor needed to see to it that they didn't put a substantial ding in his profit margins. To that end, he decided that he would need to further outsource Maude's project by bringing Ron in to do some of the heavier recon stuff. Not only was Ron at his beck and call, but he was a damn fine undercover.

"Ron!" Trevor shouted, his thick, deep voice resounding across the lawn.

True to form, Ron quickly skittered out of his trailer, skidding to a halt on his heels as soon as Trevor was in view.

"Yes, Trevor?" he said sheepishly. _Goddammit. Did he always have to catch people in the middle of jerking off?_

 "Get in here, I have an assignment for you," he called back tersely, retreating into the house before he'd finished his sentence. He turned around, mostly unsurprised to find Ron at his heels already.

"What is it, boss?" Ron asked him.

Trevor flopped back onto the couch and looked at Ron, patting the sofa beside him. Ron nervously shuffled over and took a seat beside him, his face wearing the disquiet that he was no doubt always feeling.

"I need you to stake someone out for me."

Ron's eyes widened. Trevor couldn't tell if it was out of excitement, fear, or both. "Who?"

Trevor straightened his back, moving further into Ron's personal space. "Now, now, _Ronald,_ you're getting a little bit ahead of yourself, aren't you?"

"Am I?"

"This job requires the utmost discretion. The person we're _surveilling_ is a family member of a close, personal friend of mine, Maude, the bounty hunter gal. And she's an easy scare, so you can't get caught or else she might skip town and you'll blow it for all of us."

Ron pursed his lips and nodded slowly to indicate that he understood.

"Great!" continued Trevor as he shot up from his seat. "Now, she's staying at that stucco place off Mountain View. With the bird bath out front. You know that place?"

"Sure!" Ron bleated enthusiastically.

"She's usually there between seven at night and noon. I don't know what the fuck it is she's doing when she's not there or when she _is_ there, for that matter, but I need to figure it out."

"Right, boss...but what happens when you _do_ figure it out?"

Trevor stopped and paced a little bit, suddenly aware that he hadn't really thought that far through. "Well, my jumped up little friend," he growled reaching for Ron and shaking him by the shoulder, giving him a start, "I guess the end game is to get her to fall head over heels in love with me so that I can get her to do anything I want, thereby convincing her to speak to Maude, so I can get my money and go back to running the drugs trade in this beautiful bitch of a state!"

"Hot damn!" Ron said excitedly, rising to his feet. "That's one hell of a plan, Trevor."

"And fuckin' how, Ronald..."

Trevor walked to the fridge to pull out a beer. A moment of silence passed before Ron began simping toward him, twiddling his thumbs and refusing to look at him directly. "Say, Trevor?"

"Hm?" Trevor grunted through a sip of beer.

"Er..."

Trevor swallowed hard, grimacing at the sharp feeling of carbonation in his throat. "Spit it out, Ron."

"Can I at least get a name? I mean, it might help me keep track of her. If I lose her-"

Trevor snapped his head toward Ron. "Why would you lose her?" he barked.

Ron shook his head back and forth quickly, almost violently, really, as he leapt to his own defense. "I ain't saying I'm gonna, Trevor, it's just-"

"Ha!" began Trevor's maniacal cackle. He took another swig of beer as he walked toward Ron and clapped him on the back. "I'm just fuckin' with you, Ron." The startled look on Ron's face faded, giving way to a relieved smile. "Her name's Alma. Alma Jae Eccles," Trevor said, singing her name more than merely reciting it.

He walked to the counter and hopped up to sit on it. When he looked back up at Ron, he saw that his smile had faded _again,_ and that now he was wearing something on his countenance that was slightly too horrified to be a case of the nerves. Trevor narrowed his eyes. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Alma Eccles?" Ron parroted back at him.

"Yeah, what the fuck's the problem?"

Ron set about pacing the length of the trailer, avoiding Trevor's eyes again, muttering to himself before he looked up at Trevor, shaking his head and biting his thumbnail. "Trevor, I-er-I don't think I can."

Trevor was sure that he had been mistaken. Surely Ron fuckin' Jakowski hadn't meant to defy a standing order. He'd never done it before. Trevor hopped down from the counter, rattling the dishes in the sink with the force of it, before he walked to Ron, and then around him, in a tight, predatory circle, staring him down.

"What do you mean you... _can't,_ Ron?" he spat.

Ron was standing at attention now, though not on purpose. The adrenaline was definitely coursing through his body, harkening back to cave times under the threat of Trevor, his tissues and sinews having gone completely rigid. He bit his lip and started straight ahead. When he spoke, he tried to keep the wobbling in his voice under control. But it was there. Oh, was it there.

"I just, um...I know Alma, boss. If I go around stalking her, she'll notice, is all."

Trevor stopped his pacing and ran his eyes up and down Ron's body, trying to sniff out bullshit. But Ron was pretty much always earnest where his employer was involved. He didn't have the guile to lie to Trevor.

"You _know_ her? She's twenty years younger than you. How do you _know_ her?"

"She's the board operator down at the radio station. She's always there when I do my show. You know my show? On the radio?"

"I fuckin' wish I didn't, Ron, but _yes,_ I know that someone thought it would be okay to put you on the radio."

"We stare at each other for two hours straight every week, Trevor! She'll know if I'm shadowing her!"

Trevor sighed deeply and nodded. He stared at the floor, trying to think for a moment. He glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye. His piece, sitting on the dining table. Yes, that was just what he needed. He walked to the table and picked up the little glass stem, turning it over in his fingers before placing it to his lips. It burned as always when he lit up, taking that first deep inhalation of sweet and foul smoke and exhaling slowly, savoring it. He felt his body light up ever so slightly, and his brain wasn't far behind.

He strode over to Ron, feeling the weight leaving his shoulders. He handed the stem over to Ron and let him take a hit before he dropped a bomb on him.

"It's perfect, Ron."

Ron was still blowing his hit out, when his eyes shifted toward Trevor. "What?"

Trevor seized him by the shoulders and leaned over a little bit to get into Ron's eyeline. "Ron? Are you friendly with Alma? Have you revealed your true self to her thereby solidifying what should be her absolute repulsion at your very existence?"

Ron's eyes softened. "Alma and I are plenty friendly, boss. She's real nice."

"Good!" Trevor crowed, earning another start from Ron. "All we have to do is have you invite her out for a drink. Somewhere public where she knows you won't try anything funny. And when you get there, I'll swoop in when she's good and comfortable and woo her into talking to her aunt!" He was on fire, not unlike a televangelist, proclaiming his grand design to the heavens. "You and I get paid, Maude is happy, everyone moves on with their lives, capisce?"

"Trevor, Alma ain't a dummy. If I ask her out for a drink, she'll know something's up."

"Bullshit, Ron," Trevor spat at him. "Just be your sweet self and if she's half as nice as you say she is, she won't be able to refuse you, ya poor, pitiful, paranoid shut-in!"

Ron let out an audible gulp. He was quiet for a moment, his big, red-rimmed eyes flitting about the room, either trying to formulate a way out of this or confronting the heaping pile of anxiety that came with quietly accepting his fate...

...

Alma sat at her board with her shoes kicked off, leaning back against the springy mesh on the back of her chair. The insurance office in the suite next to the radio station's had just gotten rid of all of their perfectly fine and amazing and awesome chairs in favor of what could have only been magical chairs that massaged your temples and told you how pretty you were at odd intervals, so a few days prior, she had surprised everyone at the station with new old chairs. The gesture was met with lukewarm reception, but she couldn't be happier with her ergonomically correct work furniture.

Radio station days were her favorite days. Not only did working at the station make her feel half-way legitimate, but the people that hosted their own radio shows at this particular establishment made her feel like a goddamn brain surgeon. It wasn't the best delivery method for self-esteem, but hey, it was something. She could operate the board with her eyes closed and she could smell in the air exactly seven seconds before a caller or a guest was going to lose their shit and she would have to hit the delay button. She was made for this job.

She felt a little bit morally ambiguous about putting the hideous adverts from the station's repugnant sponsors out into the world, but she tried to swallow her guilt about it, figuring that most of the people that listened to this station already owned enough guns to fill an arsenal and emotionally abused their children without anyone telling them to.

The only bad thing about the station was that sometimes, she forgot what day and time it was because there were no windows in her dark booth, so she could be in there for hours and hours without knowing who she was going to see next. She didn't bother herself with learning the schedule right away, focusing instead on figuring out the ad schedule, since they were the people with real thrust. The station managers and programmers didn't have as much clout as they fooled themselves into believing.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, taking a sip of the swill that passed for coffee around here and reaching for the hard copy of her program schedule. She grabbed the paper and looked, delighted to see that the next host on the docket was Ron Jakowski. That meant it was Friday. Sweet. She loved Ron's show. Not because she agreed with or even understood a single fucking thing that he was talking about. Governments and lizards, blah, blah. She loved his show because Ron was probably the most respectful and benign of all of the hosts that she had the pleasure of working with. He was nebbish and docile and, quite frankly, she didn't have enough of that in her life. Besides, for as batty as his rantings were, the fervor with which he delivered them was enough to rope her in. He was a relatively new addition to the station in earnest. He used to just email files of his podcast to be broadcast but recently his recording space had come under some unknown distraction and he had to move the show here.

"Alright, my favorite lunatic," she cooed to herself quietly. She was startled to see him standing there when she looked into the broadcast booth. "Shit." She reached over, to the intercom button, forcing a polite smile, relieved suddenly that he couldn't hear what she'd just said on this side of the glass. "Hi, Ron!"

"Hi, Alma!" he chirped at her, giving an enthusiastic if not coordinated wave.

"You're on in three!" she chirped back, raising her coffee cup to him.

Ron's show was especially riveting this evening. At first, she couldn't figure out why. He wasn't saying anything any more or less frenetic or far-fetched than usual. The government had extra-governmental designs on America's populace and we were all being clandestinely controlled by subliminal frequencies being administered to us through our excessive daily use of smartphones and high definition television sets. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No...No, it wasn't the content. The content was perfectly normal. It was his affect. His disposition on this particular evening. The guy was always jumpy, but this was his sanctuary. This was where he went to get away from his worries by making a concerted effort to make other people take them on right along side him. But tonight, he was keyed up well and good. And he was making a boatload of eye contact with her, which he rarely did.

After a while, Alma just sat back and watched him, not bothering to dump the obscene callers. Just taking this fellow in. Wondering just what in the hell could have been on his mind that scared him more than the constant monitoring of our telecommunications by our Reptilian overlords. It got uncomfortable after awhile, actually, and she was more than a little relieved when the time finally came to give the universal _wrap it up_ sign at him through the glass.

"...Until next time, remember, someone is listening to your thoughts. So make sure they're scrambled..."

Ron stared at Alma as he pulled off his headphones. When the lead out music was finished playing, she hit the button for the scheduled advert and watched him walk around to her booth. He courteously waited for her permission to enter and she waved him in. He closed the door behind him.

"Good show, Ron. I especially liked the bit about memory foam mattresses absorbing our thoughts. Real hard-hitting stuff."

"Thanks," he said shyly tracing invisible patterns into the carpet with his toe. He glanced over at her prosthesis where it was propped up next to her, against the board. She didn't think that he could look more nervous, but the sight of that seemed to set his teeth on edge.

"Pardon me, Ron," she said, grabbing the leg and putting her residual limb into it, listening for the sound of the pin snapping into the lock. "It gets hot in here with no AC."

"It's fine," he said with a sympathetic look. It was a familiar one. Everyone felt sorry for her, even people who had no sanity to speak of.

"If you came in here to talk to me about the obscene caller, I really don't think there's anything to worry about. I don't even think anyone bothers to call the FCC anymore and they sure as hell aren't paying anyone to listen to this shit."

"No, it's not about that."

"Oh," she said curiously. She was a little nervous now. She wasn't sure if it was her bummer empathy abilities picking up on his weird vibrations, but he was creeping her out. "What's up, Ron?"

"I..." he began, the vowel tapering off into agonizing silence.

"Ron..." she whined, not wanting to draw out the awkwardness anymore.

Ron seemed disturbed that he'd put her out like this, making her feel awkward, which made her feel really icky and bad, only adding to the tension of the situation. "Would you, Alma...Would you like to go for a drink with me? At the Inn?"

"Come again?" she asked. He wasn't asking her on a fucking _date,_ was he?

She saw his adam's apple rise and fall with a hard swallow. "I'm going for a drink at the Inn and I don't like to drink alone, and I don't mean to presume, I mean, maybe you don't drink, but they have club soda there at the Inn and-"

"Bah!" she said, cutting him off. "You're asking me out for a drink?"

He stood up, board straight, with an air of defensiveness. "I'm not asking you _out_ out, I just thought..."

There it was again. That irritating silence. Alma sighed deeply and bit her lip. "Fine."

His eyes lit up. "Fine, what?"

"I'll go for a drink with you, you gomer," she confirmed, pressing another commercial button. "I'm off in an hour, after the hell fire and rapture show. I'm driving..."

...

Alma was almost floored when she saw that Ron was waiting for her outside the station after the show. She didn't think that he would follow through. But he must have been setting there on the railing the entire time that she was pushing buttons, half-thinking about what his intentions might be before she resolved not to read into anything.

He was a nice enough fellow. He probably didn't have many friends to speak of, though if her walls could talk, they would have told him that she probably wasn't the best company to keep, especially for a person with such a paranoid disposition.

But there he was, setting there as though this was the highlight of his week. He hopped down from the railing as soon as he saw her, grinning from ear to ear. _Huh._

"Ready?" she asked, knowing that she could hardly, in good conscience, duck out now knowing that he'd been waiting for her.

"Yeah! You know where the Inn is, right? Out on-"

"I know where it is, Ron..."

The ride over was quiet. Ron sat in the passenger seat of her four-door sedan, studying the modification gadgets in her car. He seemed especially fascinated with her push/twist lever.

"That's for the gas and brakes?" he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

"Yeah, it works like a throttle, like on a motorcycle," she explained. "Honestly, I don't really think I need it. In fifteen years, Ethel's never decided to spontaneously snap off, but the state is kind of a stickler about car mods for people with disabilities like mine."

_"Ethel?"_

"My pros."

_"Pros?"_

Alma blinked hard and shook her head as if to shake off a descending sleep. She sometimes forgot that her shorthand escaped most people. And since most people were too squeamish to ask her questions, she wasn't used to people asking her to clarify.

"My prosthesis, Ron."

"Oh," he replied tersely, probably sorry that he'd asked. Alma couldn't help but roll her eyes a little bit. She still couldn't stand how so many people thought that she was made of porcelain or something. She hoped that the whole encounter wasn't so awkward. She kind of worked with this guy after all.

"Look, Ron...If you and I are going to hang out, you need to loosen up. I've been asked just about every conceivable question and the same rules that apply to most people apply to me. As long as you don't ask me any freaky questions about my sex life or something, it's totally fair game, alright?"

Alma didn't normally give people that spiel. She was pretty content letting things pan out as they would. The people that she wanted around got past the whole amputee thing fairly quickly and the rest...Well, they weeded themselves out just as quickly. 

The thing about this was that Alma had, in the last twenty minutes, grown cozy with the idea of courting a friendship with Ron. It might have been twisted and shallow, but she could use someone like him among her cadre of friends. Someone to kneed out the hipness that had pervaded her generation, to keep her feet on the ground with his incessant recitations of all that he perceived to be wrong with the world. Someone that could trick her into believing that there really _was_ a design to this fucked up planet. He was super weird and he didn't even seem to be cognizant of it. It held an appeal for her. And she was already getting a little bored of Blaine County again. She needed some variety.

"I ain't gonna ask you all that stuff..." Ron said with a tiny laugh.

"Cool," Alma said, flashing a smile his way.

The Inn was as divey as she had remembered. The contingency hadn't changed a bit, save for a few hipsters peppered into the largely rednecky landscape. They really were like lice in a way, though Alma couldn't deny that she'd adopted some of their proclivities, appropriating many spaces that didn't exist for her. Everyone wanted to be edgy these days.

She recognized some of the red-nosed locals from when she'd lived here before. People that her aunt had captured when they failed to show up at a hearing. Back when Maude was still able to capture her own charges, before her meniscus had gotten torn.

"Well, I'll be," Alma heard a woman say from behind the bar. She looked up to see a tall redhead in a jean jacket making her way around the bar. A familiar soul, gorgeous in her day, as down-home and matronly in her backward way as she had ever been.

"Hi," Alma said with a smile as she was pulled into a warm embrace. Ron took a seat at the bar, stealing glances around the dingy hall.

She pulled away from Alma, taking her face in her hands and smiling adoringly. "Little girl, I was starting to think I was never gonna lay eyes on that gorgeous mug again..."

"I wasn't gone for _that_ long. It's only been a couple years."

"A couple years too long, sugar booger," the older woman replied, leaning against the bar. "You still with that hunky landscaper with the curly hair?"

"No," Alma shot, crossing her arms, hoping that it conveyed that she didn't want to talk about Piers.

"You been back to see your auntie Maude?" she asked, obviously taking the hint.

"What's with all the questions?" Alma was happy to see a friendly face, but this was exactly the kind of interaction that she'd been dreading. She hadn't wanted to raise Ron's hackles by insisting on another place, knowing full well that her old family friend would most likely still be running this hole in the wall, but...

"Well, you ain't asked me about what I've been up to, Alma Jae Eccles. Did Florida bake the manners out of you?"

Alma mimicked the woman's stance, leaning against the bar. "You're right. I'm sorry. What's new?"

The woman giggled, propping herself on one arm and looking past Alma, nodding in the direction of the back lounge. "I got married, and you weren't even around to serve as my flower girl."

Alma followed her gaze back to see a smattering of young men by the pool table, each one rowdier than the next.

"Er..."

"The one in the white tank top. That's my Dale."

Alma quickly honed in on who she was talking about. "Jesus, woman. I could have babysat him in high school," she said, snapping her head back toward the middle aged barkeep.

She narrowed her eyes at Alma, signifying that this was no longer on the table for discussion. "Is it rum and ginger still?"

"With bitters. And a beer, too please. It's been a long couple of years," Alma said quietly.

"Coming right up."

Alma took a seat next to Ron, who had been perfectly quiet and meek thus far. She straightened her posture, looking at him through the side of her eye, watching him twiddle his thumbs nervously.

"What'll you have, Ron?"

"Er..."

"Hey, get Ron a beer," she said before he could answer.

"Rude," the leggy redhead muttered.

"Please!" Alma clarified, happy to be immediately rewarded for the half-hearted show of manners.

She picked up the beer and turned to Ron. "So, what's your story, Ron Jakowski?"

"Sorry?" he asked taking an impressively large sip of his. "I ain't got a story," he continued, breathless from the unnecessarily large gulp.

"Everyone's got a story and I want to know yours. Otherwise, what's the point of you getting up the nerve to ask me out?"

Ron's eyes got huge as he shook his head rapidly. "It's not like that, Alma! I didn't mean anything by-"

Alma cut him off with a huge laugh that startled most of the bar, raising her bottle to him and smacking him on the forearm. "I'm fucking with you," she said cutting through the laughter. "Come on, you wanna get to know each other, right?"

Ron flashed her a shaky smile and nodded choppily at her proposal.

And so, for the next half hour, Ron regaled her with the tale of his failed marriage, and his descent into madness. Well, it would be more accurate to say that he was telling her about some kind of _awakening_ to some secret truth, but Alma could read subtext just fucking fine. He made vague allusions to a _mentor,_ a mentor that sounded more like a prison guard or an orc with a fondness for designer drugs. But she wasn't going to tell him that. Because it quickly became apparent to her that Ron didn't really have anyone in the world.

It's not as though she could throw stones. She didn't really have anyone, either. Most of her relationships had collapsed or were so shallow that it would be more appropriate to typify them as fellow stragglers at some lonely clubhouse without any walls or a roof - unless the lot of them decided to meet at some seedy club. More often than that, though, they wound up in the desert for a bonfire and a group bender.

"So...What do you do for fun?" Alma asked, her already low, smoky voice becoming even more guttural with the liquor basting her vocal chords.

Ron was finally loose now. It wasn't just the booze, either. Alma had the feeling that he hadn't been able to unload in a good long while. "I told you already..."

"No," she said sternly, pointing the neck of her beer bottle at him. "The conspiracy stuff is work, you said. I'm asking what you do to bring joy to your life, Ron Jakowski." She looked to the ceiling to replay the pronunciation of his last name back to herself, nodding when she was satisfied that she'd said it correctly.

Ron shrugged. "This is fun."

"And when was the last time you did _this?"_ she asked, wagging her finger between the two of them. "'Cause I get the feeling that you haven't been out in a loooonnng time." She was cutting loose herself for the first time in a decent while, so naturally she was going to start getting a little bit uncouth with her line of questioning.

Ron flashed her a warm smile. "Well, it's quality, not quantity, Alma."

Alma let his words marinade for a second before she sat back and looked at him with a huge grin. It was the most lucid thing she had ever heard him say in their short acquaintance. "And fuckin' how, Ron," she laughed, clinking her bottle to his.

The pair of them took deep, long slugs of their brew and reveled in the crooked ambiance of the Inn. The weekend warriors' voices climbing in volume as they tied one on, the old rednecks bitching about ammo prices, the jukebox filling the air with the misery of some unknown outlaw.

The strange stillness of that moment was quickly broken when Alma caught a glimpse of something in the mirror behind the bar. A streak of something unknown, upsetting this strange placidity that surrounded them.

Alma didn't know how she knew, but she did. She knew that this wasn't just some errant reveler cutting too close to their slice of contentment. It was a _someone_ that was poised to enter their quiet, pleasant little orbit for better or worse. A shaky, muddy premonition.

She leaned on her elbows, staring at the rubber runner behind the bar, cluttered with overturned pint glasses, suddenly afraid. Of what? Who the hell knew? She'd been plagued with that cruel sight beyond sight her entire life, never being gifted with a justification for it.

She heard him before she saw him.

"Ronald," came a deep voice behind them. She looked at Ron first, who was again wearing that look of childlike worry on his pockmarked mug. "Fancy meeting you here."

That voice shook her to her very core. She had to look. And oh, how she looked. She turned to meet the owner of this voice. All six feet of him, armored in refined, brawny tissues and tendons beneath a white t-shirt that hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in far too long by the look of it.

His hair was thinning, his mouth adorned with a tiny scar on the upper lip. And the eyes. Wild and tired pools of golden brown looking between Ron and her.

"Trevor," said Ron, forcing a pleasant little trill. "Um..."

Alma gritted her teeth and hooded her eyes, bluffing her way through the beginning of what was promising to be a perfectly odd interaction if her gut was any indication.

The man that she now knew as _Trevor_ pressed his lips together and looked her over, lingering longer on her neck than he did her prosthesis. She lingered on his, too, making out the words _cut here_ in faded tattoo ink. _Holy fuck._

"Hello, little lady," he said in that low, hazy voice of his. "I've never seen anyone like you hanging around the likes of this guy before," he said, clapping Ron cruelly on the back.

Alma looked at Ron, mostly to make sure that he was okay. That sound of Trevor's hand coming down on his back was brutal. Ron seemed to pick up on her concern and flashed her a nice smile to indicate that he was alright, she supposed.

She looked back up at Trevor and, almost without thinking, extended her hand to him.

In a clear, calm voice, she said, without being asked, "Alma."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter flowed okay. If there's any (gentle) feedback you want to give me regarding that or anything else, please feel free. I love hearing your guys' input. Loves to you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's chapter three. I want to thank you all for the love that you've given me. I also want to thank all the people that have been reading my older stuff and giving me wonderful feedback, if'n you happen upon this story. Without further adieu, here's chapter 3...

Trevor couldn't stop staring if he wanted to, which he definitely fucking didn't. He'd watched Alma's increasingly bleary eyes slowly follow Ron out of the bar after he'd dismissed himself on Trevor's signal of grinding his boot heel into the toe of his Birkenstocked foot until he couldn't take the pain anymore and shot up from his seat, muttering something about feeding the coyotes. It had undoubtedly left Alma confused. And she clearly didn't have a clear code of etiquette because she spent a solid five minutes with her lips to her beer bottle searching around the room for an excuse to be found written on the specials board or on the faces of the other patrons. Finding nothing, she finally turned her great big eyes on him. Eyes that were the color of that strange green dust that lined the corners of the Alamo Sea. Probably a little bit toxic, definitely pretty. They ruled her face under two identical soft arches.

At some point, she finally lowered the bottle so Trevor could get a look at her roller coaster lips, which she bit the corner of as though she were trying to lock it up. Trevor found that funny since it didn't seem like she would know what to say to him if she _wanted_ to speak to him. She'd been quiet for the last hour listening to Trevor make nice with Ron, who mindlessly listed off Trevor's entrepreneurial and leadership qualities. Alma was either unimpressed or didn't believe a goddamn thing that Ron was saying. It didn't matter now, though. They were alone.

She looked like a burlesque star from the Dust Bowl, her shoulder length auburn hair falling around her face in kinky but tame waves, but she was plainly not trying to entice Trevor. She instead studied him like an insect from the deepest reaches of the rainforest: at a distance, but with a morbid curiosity. Since she appeared to be studious with her drinking partners, he decided that she should take the lead on things. And sweet mother of fuck did she take the lead.

"You're a drug dealer, aren't you?" she asked him in a comically subdued way after a moment.

Trevor leaned over, shoving some empty pints out of the way so that nothing was between them. The maneuver didn't seem to faze Alma. "I thought you'd never ask. I'm _the_ drug dealer, kid. So if you and your friends ever need some party favors on the way to some hipster music festival out in the sticks, you make sure to come see me first."

Alma grimaced as she took a sip of her beer. "This is a weird way to drum up clients."

"If it ain't weird, it ain't fun. I'm on the cutting edge of sales strategies in the illicit drug market, little lady."

"I haven't been to a music festival in eight years _big guy,"_ she said sarcastically, leaning in further to match his invasion. She rested on her elbows and clanged her beer bottle rhythmically against the pints on the table. "Besides, you're the reason I'm here aren't you?"

Trevor grabbed the bottom of her bottle to stifle the clanking, since he'd decided just then that it was an intimidation tactic. When he did, she looked at him, cocking a brow. "What in the hell makes you say that?" he said, trying not to sound too defensive.

"Give me a break Trevor Philips, _CEO,"_ she said, parroting Ron's recitation of his credentials. "First Ron comes up to me _-_ _Ron,_ who seems to have an anti-woman force field around him at all times - and asks me out for a drink." She moved her jaw from side to side and started at the table, tracing the rim of her bottle with her long index finger, tipped in a deep red lacquer. "Then not ten minutes go by before you swoop in on our date acting like the whole thing is some coincidence before our mutual friend abruptly leaves me here with you." She looked up at him with accusation on her face, but nothing else. "So what gives, huh?"

"You thought it was a date?"

"Ha!" she barked loudly, pointing at him. "How would you know it wasn't unless it was set up?" _J'accuse._

Trevor stared at her for a minute, nodding his head. He couldn't help the smile that spread across his face, both at her cleverness and at the look of satisfaction that she was trying to suppress as she stared him down, sipping her beer. He chuckled and threw his hands up. "Alright, alright. You got me. _It was set up."_

Alma suddenly wasn't wearing her cute face anymore as she slammed the bottle on the table. "Why?" she asked pointedly, as though she had been waiting for this moment.  _Shit._ Perhaps she'd figured out that Maude was looking for her. He didn't know how, though. Maude was one of the most discreet people on this planet as far as Trevor knew. He thought for a moment, wondering if he could salvage this operation.

He looked at her good then, noticing only now that her eyes were really, really glazed over. Like she had just become ten times drunker than she had been only a moment earlier. She was still standing, mind you, but the cutting accusation behind her eyes was gone. Maybe he could salvage something from this wreck.

He leaned forward. This time, she leaned farther back. Obviously, she had re-established the rules of personal space without consulting him. "I saw you outside of your house one night. You'd just moved in and I noticed you right away. The moon was out. And full. And you looked so beautiful that I thought I was dreaming. And I knew then that I had to meet you." He had never employed the voice that he had just used on Alma. It was foreign, even to his ears - even inside of his head, it sounded strange, almost disembodied. He'd come across enough sappy movies in his day, owed mostly to the fact that his best friend was a cinema fanatic. This always worked in the films, he reasoned.

Alma's face didn't change to a softer one, though. She didn't stare back at him adoringly or take his hand. Instead, she stood up from her seat stiffly, as though she were a private in the army whose commanding officer had just walked in. She snatched her keys off the table and gave him one last look before walking past him stiffly and without a word.

"I'm leaving my car here," Trevor heard her call on the way out the door.

"Alright, sweetheart," Janet said, clearly having no clue what was going on. "Be safe!" she called after Alma. She looked at Trevor then with suspicion in her eye. She had warned him away from Alma earlier in the night when she'd caught him staring at her. _She ain't a working girl, Trevor. Hands off._ Now she crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes as if to say _What have you done?_

"Fuck," Trevor muttered under his breath. Alma had been too shrewd for him to work it even with all that booze in her. He tapped the tabletop in front of him. He should have known being a disingenuous bullshitter wasn't going to get him anywhere with that Alma Jae. She might have come from the sticks but she was a little too savvy to fall all over herself because someone had tried to pay her a cheesy compliment.

"You let that girl alone, Trevor!" Janet called after him as he took off after the young woman.

Even with such a short lead time and a prosthetic leg, Alma had gotten a good start on him. She was quick and he ran out into the street and looked around, looking just in time to see her disappear behind an abandoned gas station kitty corner from the Inn. He didn't run after her, instead skulking briskly to where he'd seen her, cursing her under his breath for making his job so difficult. Alma wasn't enough of a sucker for him to put the necessary moves on her. She also hadn't been tanked enough for him to take advantage of her. Not that he would have taken advantage of her _in that way._ Hell, for as much of a dirtbag as everyone had pegged him to be, it was usually he that was the more vulnerable party when alcohol and sex were mixed.

When he was behind the house, he looked around and saw nothing. Not a solitary soul in the dark street. There was no way that she could have gotten away that fast unless she'd cut through someone's yard, and chances were he would have heard a shotgun sound out if that had been the case. Folks in these parts loved taking advantage of the castle doctrine.

He sighed deeply and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees. "Goddammit!" he roared, huffing frustrated breaths through his nose. But then, even through the loud, heaving breaths he was taking to keep his cool, he heard something. He steadied his breath enough to listen to the faint sound. It was music. Coming from...here. Here where he was standing. He looked to the roof of the abandoned gas station, noticing then that there were stairs leading to the roof.

He took the stairs two at a time and when he reached the top, he saw a set of flames in a standing barbecue lapping at the air. The boom box where the music was coming from was next to a couch that was turned away from him. He made his way to the couch, the music becoming louder. He walked around to see Alma laying there on her side, her head propped up on her hand as she took a long drag of her cigarette.

She didn't look at him or acknowledge him right away, and for a second, he figured that she must not have seen him.

"I can't believe you had the balls to follow me," she mused. It was so clear and casual that it almost seemed like she was talking to herself until she turned to look at him. The light from the flames danced on her face, which wore a less-than-amused expression.

"Well, what the fuck was I supposed to do? I didn't wanna leave it like _that,"_ he said, gesturing toward the Inn.

Alma sat up, clearing the way for him to sit, too, though he hardly wanted to chance sitting too close.

"Yeah, I'd be bummed, too, if I'd acted like a total asshat and didn't get to explain myself." She stared at him hard as she took another, more nervous drag.

"What?" Trevor said, shrugging. "You don't like _attention?_ It's _beneath_ you or something?" _Sarcasm mode engaged._ "Or wait...You just don't like attention when it's coming from the likes of _me?"_

Either Alma knew that she'd set him off or she had an extraordinary response time to being called a snob. She angled her body at him, draping her arm across the back of the couch as she shot back. "I like attention just fine, _asshole._ But I don't like being set up and I sure as fuck don't like when people try to use heavy-handed flattery to get things from me. It's gross."

"Who said I was trying to flatter you? Did it ever occur to you that I _meant_ what I said?"

"There was no full moon when I moved back. It was totally pitch black out."

"What?" Trevor asked, low but incredulous.

"You said the moon was full and I looked _soooo_ beautiful," she said, fanning her hands out sarcastically.

"What kind of nitpicky bullshit is that?"

"It's a detail, Trevor. Details _matter._ More than _anything,"_ she sniped softly.

"You mean you just remember offhand when the moon was full?"

"Yeah," she said haughtily. "Full moons tend to bring weirdos into my _space,"_ she snipped with an exaggerated gesture around her body.

He had no idea she would be such a tiresomely disagreeable person based on one holiday photo and Maude's solemn look when she vaguely described their falling out. But she was also somewhat cute. Under different circumstances, this could have been some annoying foreplay.

The time came for that silence to descend upon them again. Trevor relaxed his stance a little bit, still looking at her as she sank the side of her face into the back of the couch. The radio mirrored their silence for a moment until a song came over the air waves. The tinny opening guitar riff to _Lonely Is the Night._

"Tonight's a full moon," Trevor said emptily.

Alma took a drag of her cigarette and exhaled without looking at him. "And you're a weirdo." A smile crept onto her face as she stole a look at him out the side of her eye.

"So are you," he shot back gently. "How would you know that there was gonna be a couch and a shitty stereo system on this roof top, otherwise?"

"I know a guy."

The sound of crickets and the passing of cars filled the night air around them, seemingly growing louder even with the stereo system there.

"God, Billy Squier is sexy," Alma said through a deep sigh.

"Pardon?"

"My ex looked just like him," she said, leaning back to look at the stars. "He was sexy, too."

Trevor put one foot up on the couch, parallel to Alma's faux leg. "I'm guessing sexy ain't enough for Miss Alma."

She shot him a look. Not a mean one, but it had a hint of warning in it. "Is it ever?"

"It is for me," Trevor snorted.

She turned further over on her side and started flicking at the toe of Trevor's boot with her middle finger. He tried to ignore it, resisting the urge to take it as a flirtatious gesture and start doing it back to her. It might have been weird, especially since she probably wouldn't have been able to feel it.

"Trevor?" she said after a few minutes of silence.

"Yeah?" he said. He was both confounded and intrigued by her sudden show of familiarity.

"If you have a problem with me, you should really take it up with the Lost. All's I do is ship their stuff. I don't run the operation or anything..."

Trevor instantly shot up at the mention of the Lost. That very word had carved a gnarled outcropping in his mind whether someone was referring to his mortal (but fun to fuck with) enemies or whether the word was literal/colloquial/what the fuck ever. The paltry amount of booze in his system did nothing to stifle the blow. But he didn't have time to interrogate her about it now because...

When he was done fuming, he looked down at her to see her eyes closed. She wasn't moving. He grabbed her foot and shook it, receiving nary a stir in response. He did it again, more forcefully, but it just made her look more like a ragdoll, her limbs jostled around without her consent. She was out like a light, no denying that. He knelt down to her face level.

"Alma," he growled.

He grabbed her nose and twisted it, but she didn't smack his hand away. A nasally _ogay, m'up_ was all he earned, along with absolute stillness and silence. Out fuckin' cold. What an anomaly this was. She was perfectly lucid and comprehensible right up until she lost consciousness. She hadn't given any indication that she was pissed, but here she was, out like a light.

Trevor positioned his arms under her like a forklift and hoisted her up over his shoulder in one motion. He might not have been able to ply her with his charms, but since she was easy to pass out (after a while), he could deliver her to Maude's. Getting her down the stairs without dicknailing her head against the railing was easy, even though he wouldn't have felt so bad about it given the implication that she was in with the fucking Lost.

She was light enough that he hardly broke a sweat carrying her back to his truck, though he was huffing. It wasn't out of exertion, though. It was out of anger and frustration and being between a goddamn rock and a hard place. He didn't know how much weight to give her odd little confession. She was a mite drunk, after all. Maybe she was just boffing one of those assholes. It wouldn't have surprised him seeing as how she obviously liked greasy 1970's throwbacks if her affinity for _Billy Squier_ was anything to go by. There was a handful of bikers that still fit that bill.

He set her gingerly in the truck, imbued with the tepid comfort that maybe she was just getting her rocks off with one of their tauter, sexier young members, and _not_ a direct threat to his place of business. As soon as he shut the passenger side door, she quickly slumped over against it. He got in the driver's side, stealing a quick look at her as though he could actually figure it out by looking at her.

The drive to Maude's was a quick one. He kicked up plenty of dusk and left more than one deceased animal in his wake on the highway, but they arrived at their destination. He didn't bother minding how much dust he was kicking up when he barreled down the short dirt road to her house. As soon as Alma was over his shoulder again, the porch light kicked on, and a short moment later, a stocky silhouette appeared in the doorway. The fucking flood light from the porch was bright enough to be seen from space, so...

Maude swung her door open and hobbled out onto the porch in a silk kimono over her _Bishops_ muscle tee and mauve jogging shorts.

"Trevor?" she grumbled.

She didn't need her to call after him twice. He gave one more good hoist to ensure that Alma wouldn't slide off his shoulder and headed for the porch.

"Where do you want her?"

Maude sighed deeply and shook her head before holding the door open for him. When they were inside, she led Trevor to a room off of the modest kitchen, stepping aside once she had shoved open the antiquated door that seemed to be practically painted shut. She flicked a bedside lamp on. The room was small, covered wall-to-wall in light a light blue fleur-de-lis wallpaper, which was in turn papered over with the portraits of dead French existentialists and the album cover art of a bunch of post-punk bands. The bed was already made up with an heirloom quilt with a haggard-ass stuffed bunny propped up against the pillow. This room hadn't been touched in years by the look of it.

Trevor poured Alma out onto the double bed. She didn't stir at all, settling on her back. He leaned against the wall, holding his line of questioning while Maude looked upon her niece. She didn't seem to be pining, though. She must have done this plenty of times. She sat down on the bed, adjusting the waistband of her shorts before she set to work. She rolled down the black nylon sleeve on Alma's fake leg and by some magic that Trevor couldn't see, found the mechanism to loosen the thing, sliding it off seamlessly and setting it carefully against the mahogany night stand. She pulled one of the pillows out from under Alma's head and tucked it carefully between her thighs.

Alma didn't move an inch when Maude pulled the throw at the foot of the bed over her. The hulky woman moved to the end of the bed and stuck her hands under the sheets, moving her hands about until she produced a black silicone thing all rolled up in a donut shape. She rolled it up even further and nested it into the socket of the fake leg. When Alma began moving, Maude stepped away to stand next to Trevor as though she had set off some chemical reaction that she'd seen a million times. Like her niece was a ticking time bomb that had detonated every weekend since she'd discovered alcohol. Maybe even before that.

The show of atypical maternity by Maude had edged Trevor away from the harsh, angry interrogation that he'd wanted to dictate to her. But he still wanted answers. The two of them watched the young woman quietly for a moment. She showed the first sign of reflex just then, quickly snatching the raggedy stuffed bunny into her arms and covering her face with one hand before descending into a bout of soft snoring. 

Maude sighed. "Thanks for bringing her to me, Trevor. I owe you big for this one."

Trevor gnawed on the inside of his cheek, the comedown of the smoke he's imbibed earlier in the day setting his teeth on edge. "Don't mention it."

"No," Maude said thoughtfully. Trevor looked down at her to see her staring intently at the sleeping woman on the bed. "I mean it. I can't tell you how important this is to me." She looked so sad then.

The wistful way that Maude had said that, the way that her words had seemed to empty out into some black hole in that room gave him pause. He didn't want to upset her or make her think that he was out to fuck with her long lost child-she-never-had. But he also couldn't deny that there was no fucking way he could ignore the elephant in the room that only he could see, even if Maude was seeing a completely different elephant. The presence of the big, grey bastards could sure as fuck be felt in that moment.

"You know she's doing business with the Lost, right?" he said, hoping to rip that bandage off quickly, both for himself and his old friend.

Maude simply sighed and closed her eyes before turning her sallow, light eyes on him. "I didn't know the who. But I had a good idea of the what."

Trevor sawed his teeth along his tongue, trying to contemplate his next move. It hurt his head because he wasn't exactly use to being so thoughtful. Strategy had always had a way of presenting itself to him in the moment when it wasn't being fed to him. But he needed to cool it for now. This was a family-sized order of fuckery.

"You mind if I stay here for the night?"

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Always, I'm asking for comments like alms to feed my creative soul. They really do help. Thanks for reading, my baby angel loves. *kiss* *kiss* *kiss*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> H'allo, friends. This chapter is a little bit short, but I think that it's funny. I hope that you find some humor in it as I did. If you don't, then that means that it was sort of masturbatory, which I do not want. But still, I think it moves the story ahead. Do enjoy to the best of your ability ;)

Trevor catnapped his way through the rest of the night. He was still too pissed off and under-gratified at the lack of answers the rest of the night had brought to actually sleep properly, though his comedown was calling him to sleep for a good two days. He finally pulled himself up from his lie down on the couch when Maude emerged from her bedroom, a slight bounce in her step. She set about pulling out cookery, opening and closing the fridge, whisking, cracking, and flipping with her back to him.

He rose to his feet and shuffled to the kitchen, rubbing his hands through his thinning hair. "Mornin', Maude."

She turned to him then, cradling a bowl full of the viscous insides of eggs all mixed up and ready to go into a pan. "Good mornin', Trevor," she said, smiling sweetly at him. She went back to making breakfast, adjusting burners and sprinkling salt.

"You need help with anything?"

"If you wouldn't mind puttin' on a pot of strong coffee, I'd by much obliged."

Trevor did as he was told, making for the coffee pot. He walked to the sink to fill it up. "Maude, I really need to talk to Alma about what she said last night."

"Then stay for breakfast."

"Maude, I'm serious."

"So am I," she said, turning over some hash browns. She knocked some errant potatoes off of her spatula, turned down the heat, and turned and looked up at Trevor. "But you listen here, Trevor. I've been waiting for this day for a long time and I do _not_ want you scaring her off, ya hear?"

Trevor rolled his eyes and leaned against the counter. He was starting to feel the lack of sleep now and he was realizing now that he'd forgotten why he'd agreed to this in the first place. "You do realize that if she's in bed with with the Lost, they ain't gonna cut her loose unless they're burying her in the desert, right?"

Maude flinched, and stayed frozen like that for a moment before she reached over and picked the spatula up again, giving the hash browns one more turn. She cut the burners and braced herself against the counter. "I suppose _you_ would know. I understand that this ain't ideal, Trevor, and I plan on seeing to it that nothing of the sort befalls my niece." She turned her face to him, her tired, pale eyes pleading with him. "But let me talk to her first. Please."

Trevor thought about it for a minute. "Fine," he grumbled.

Maude grabbed a stack of plates. "You ain't gonna get anything out of her right away, anyhow. The morning after she ties one on, she's usually pretty useless until she has some coffee and a meal in her."

Trevor snorted. "Noted."

Only a minute later, as though she had been summoned by Maude and Trevor's hushed discussion of how to handle her, Alma emerged from her room. Her disheveled hair covered her face as she made a beeline for the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind her. She wasn't in there a full minute before she emerged and shuffled toward the dining table. Her short black skirt had ridden up in the night, showing quite a bit of thigh. The strap of her camisole was hanging off of her shoulder. Modesty didn't appear to be on her list of priorities right now. She collapsed into a dining chair and yawned deeply as Maude set a plate of food in front of her.

Trevor studied Alma's downcast eyes, which were still bleary and a little red. She was wearing an angry kind of a pout, the way a little kid does when you wake them up from a nap. Maude leaned down and cupped Alma's face in her hand. Alma passively let her kiss her on the cheek, though from the looks of it, the young woman might not have had any idea where the fuck she was. Maude kept a hold of the young woman's face as she whispered something into her ear. Alma eyes focused and unfocused as she listened, responding with a simple grunt before she reached for a pair of dark wayfarer sunglasses in the middle of the table, pulling them onto her face. She looked like a seasoned rock star coming off of the west coast leg of her tour.

It was then that she seemed to notice Trevor, sipping his coffee and staring at her. She lowered the sunglasses and stared at him hard, pushing them back up the bridge of her nose once she was satisfied that he was really there.

"Alma Jae? Trevor saw to it that you got here safe and sound last night," Maude scolded, taking a seat at the table. Alma leaned forward, staring straight ahead as she shoveled some food into her mouth, grunting in response. "You passed out on some rooftop by the Yellowjack. If he hadn't been there, lord only knows what might have happened to ya."

Alma finished swallowing her food before she took a long drink of coffee and, still staring straight ahead, eyes unreadable behind the black sunglasses, said "Trevor's a drug dealer, Auntie." Her voice was hushed and croaky.

"Alma..." Maude warned.

"Ah..." Trevor bellowed, receiving a pained grimace from Alma at his loudness. He wasn't going to coddle her just because she couldn't handle her booze. "So you remember me, huh? You could have fooled me, conking out in the middle of our conversation last night, _Alma."_ She seemed to be ignoring him all of a sudden, propping herself on her elbows and sipping from her mug. "You wouldn't happen to remember the _particulars_ of that conversation, would you?"

Alma froze, seemingly considering the question. But soon enough, she simply shrugged lazily. "No."

Trevor pulled his chair closer to hers and got in her space. She definitely noticed, turning to face him slowly while she gnawed on a piece of bacon. "You don't remember what it was you told me right before you passed out? Because it was _very_ interesting..."

"Trevor," Maude snipped at him under her breath. She shook her head with uncharacteristic animation and ferocity while Alma went back to shoveling food into her maw, intermittently scratching her head or otherwise twitching.

Trevor sat back and seethed at the blockade that Maude was throwing in his way. He didn't see why it was such a big deal. Alma had only been around for a month, so how loyal could she have been to those road lice, anyway? After a couple more minutes of Alma absently devouring the contents of her plate, she dropped her fork ceremoniously onto her empty plate and leaned back in her chair, cradling her stomach.

Trevor couldn't help but look her body up and down while Maude cleared the table. Maybe it's because the woman seemed to be running on fumes and little else, whereas last night she'd blown out of the bar like she'd just remembered that she had houses to level with her bare hands, but he was just noticing now how petite she was. She couldn't have been over five-three and she didn't have a whole lot going on in the way of tits. The only thing that really resembled anything like real bulk on her was her slightly protruding belly that she was now lightly drumming with her fingers.

"Where do you put it?" Trevor asked her.

"Huh?"

"You heard me. You just killed every last scrap on that plate. Where do you put it?"

Alma shrugged. "In all honesty, I'm probably just going to throw it all up later," she croaked with a hiccup, rubbing her temple slowly. Trevor wondered if holding her booze was always such an ordeal. Maybe he could use that to his advantage to figure out what those fuckheads out at Stab City were up to. Yeah...She obviously wasn't a teetotaler, but she was something of a fortress when she was sober. If he could just get her to stay conscious long enough to spill about what the Lost were up to...

Maude reappeared at the table and sit down, clasping her hands under her chin. She looked between Alma and Trevor. The gaze that she flashed Trevor was steely and cautionary, but when she let her eyes rest on her niece, there was a sad, worrisome longing. "Alma," she began, smoothing out the tablecloth, "Trevor would like to have a word with you _when you're feeling better."_ She stared daggers at him when she said the last part.

Alma continued to rub the sides of her head, her chin dropped to her chest. "Why?"

"Well, he seems to think that you might have gotten yourself into a _situation,_ little girl. Trevor's got his finger on the pulse of this county. He knows all the undesirables."

"Fuckin' A right I do," Trevor muttered.

Alma abruptly stopped massaging the sides of her head and looked up, pulling the sunglasses off. She looked between Maude and Trevor, wearing a sad, frightened look on her face. The dark circles under her eyes were accented with smudged mascara, making her look all the more pitiful. The more she looked, though, the more that look grew angry. She turned to Maude and threw a thumb over her shoulder at Trevor.

"Did you _hire_ this nutbar to come and find me?" she asked, standing up slowly.

Maude followed suit, rising to her feet, holding her hands out in an attempt at placation. "Trevor's a friend of mine, Alma Jae. Has been for a long time."

Alma looked at Trevor like they'd known each other for years and that she'd just uncovered some massive betrayal. "You didn't corner me because of the Lost. You _found_ me 'cause Maude hired you," she said incredulously.

Trevor rose and stared down at Alma, who, if looks could kill, had trained a doomsday worth of missles on him. He was a little confused as to why it mattered how he'd crossed paths with her, but he could tell that he and Maude had just stepped on a landmine and that they were flying through the proverbial air together.

"What in the hell was I supposed to do, kid?" Maude spat, sounding more angry than Trevor had ever heard her. Alma was pacing the kitchen with her hands gripping her hair. "I ain't seen you in nearly three years. Showing up at your house with a damn fruit basket hardly seemed feasible."

Alma clenched her fists at her sides. "Was a fucking _phone call_ out of the question, Auntie?"

Maude guffawed at the suggestion, walking to Alma and getting five inches from her face, pointing her finger at Alma's nose. "You packed up and left this place without a _phone call,_ child. Why in the hell should I have thought that it would be any different now?"

Alma seemed oddly disarmed by her aunt's words, her face falling into a pained one. She was still scowling, but it looked like Maude had really cut to the quick. "I waited for you to call, Maude," she said quietly. "You never did. I kept my phone number the same, but I didn't hear a peep from you the entire time I was away."

Maude's face softened now. She stepped away from Alma, shooting Trevor a _help me_ face before looking back to her niece. But Alma didn't have anything more to say to her aunt, turning her attention slowly on Trevor. "And you," she snipped, looking him up and down. "You're a _whore."_

Maude seemed to be as mystified by that statement as Trevor was. The two of them watched as Alma walked backward a few steps, staring both of them down before turning on her heel and heading into the bathroom again, shutting the door behind her. She quickly opened it again, though, telling Trevor "Let Ron know that the next time I see him, I'm kicking his traitorous ass to the moon!" She slammed the door, leaving Trevor and Maude to stare at one another with bewildered expressions.

Maude place her palm on her forehead, sighing deeply and shaking her head. "Lord," she muttered.

"You didn't try to call her, Maude?" Trevor said, pointing to the bathroom door.

Maude shot him a defensive look. "I was pissed off, too, Trevor. The little brat takes things so personally," she said, trailing off.

Trevor buried his face in his hands, wondering what kind of gargantuan pile of familial bullshit he'd just stepped into. "Maude?" he said, summoning every bit of patience that he had left. "If I don't figure out what in the hell that woman is up to, then there is _nothing_ I can do to keep her from becoming fuckin' worm food, ya understand?"

Yeah, he knew that he'd just taken on an additional responsibility. While his patience was waning, he still loved Maude and there didn't seem to be a fuckin' thing he could do to avoid getting involved. And yes, he had ulterior motives, but he knew that he needed to light a hot goddamn fire under his friend's ass if he was going to save his business and follow through with this promise that he hadn't _quite_ made to keep Alma out of trouble, but that was implied nonetheless.

"You do what you gotta do, puddin.'" Maude said, throwing her hands up. She walked to the kitchen counter and leaned against it, sighing deeply through her nose..

Trevor walked to the bathroom door and pounded on it with the side of his fist.

"Short of breaking my door!" Maude appended.

He knocked again, more subdued this time, shooting Maude a look that said _Is this a gentle enough knock for you, missus?_ There was no answer. Instead, there was silence, followed by an abrupt rustling and the sound of something clanging. Trevor looked at Maude who looked at the ceiling, exasperated.

"What the hell was that?"

"She climbed out the window, Trevor." Obviously, this had been a common occurrence once upon a time if Maude's well-practiced look of disconnected weariness was anything to go by.

"Oh for fuck sake," Trevor said, immediately making for the front door. The harsh light of late morning assaulted Trevor as soon as he left the shady canopy of the porch. He jogged around the side of the house. Since he'd never really explored Maude's property, he was immediately surprised to be confronted with two huge stacks of old semi-truck tires forming a narrow corridor to a cattle gate. Trevor edged his way between the tires and hastily climbed the rungs of the gate, flinging himself over it and hitting the dust with a harsh _thud._

"Fuckin', sonofamother-rrrghh," he growled as he navigated the sea of derelict farm equipment scattered around back. He looked around the yard for signs of life as he stalked about, pausing when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A Shetland pony came around the corner of the small barn toward the back of the property. He was munching and dropping bits of carrot, stopping occasionally to retrieve the chunks that he'd dropped, greedily munching and dropping, munching and dropping. 

Trevor had heard that Maude kept the whacky ass little horse as a pet, but had never seen him before. Now he was Trevor's canary. Alma must have bribed the little bastard with a carrot to keep him from giving away her position. She hadn't counted on him being so goddamn eager, though. Now the carrot was gone and the pony was swiftly toddling back to the barn for another treat.

"Gotcha," Trevor said through gritted teeth. He rounded to corner into the barn, just in time to see the pony stopping in his tracks, searching for the generous hand that fed and...

The ass end of a dune buggy fishtailing away before gaining traction and speeding off into the distance.

"Motherfucker!" Trevor barked, leaning over and placing his hands on his knees. The pony startled at Trevor's outburst, shuffling sideways away from him. "Not you," Trevor assured the weird little equine.

He stood up and walked back out of the barn to see Maude standing there. The pony wasn't far behind, trotting over to Maude, who immediately rewarded him with head pets and neck scratches. She looked up at Trevor.

Trevor could only shake his head. What in the fuck had he gotten himself into? Maude was a dear friend, there was no contending that. But she hadn't exactly given him adequate warning that her brother's progeny was going to be so temperamental and stubborn and fucking slippery. Maude seemed to read his mind then, though she knew that there was little that she could do to abate his frustration. She shrugged tiredly at him.

"I said she was wayward. I never said she didn't know how to hot wire a dune buggy."

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, my friends. I know that this chapter was short, but I hope that you got something out of it. If it felt hasty or thrown together, please let me know so I can adjust my pacing. As always, comments and feedback are so dearly appreciated. If the must strikes me again tomorrow, I might be able to at least start a new chapter. Goodness me do I love Labor Day <3 Oh, yeah, and I love you, too!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. You guys. This is so long, it's annoying. Bleh. But hopefully that's just me because I've been staring at it for the past few hours. This is a very Alma-heavy chapter with a brief but oh-so-Trevor scene at the end. I hope you like it.

Alma caught the first of what she hoped would be a series of lucky breaks when she arrived at the Inn to retrieve her car. She pulled herself carefully out of the dune buggy, her face tacky with tears, trying to sniff back as much of her snot as she could for want of a tissue. She leaned against the frame of the buggy and sobbed a few more times, hoping that she could expel enough of her angst before she got back to the house so that she could get to work on the next shipment for the Lost. After a moment of her aching head being filled with nothing but her sobs and the passing of cars, she was startled by a voice.

"Er...Alma?"

"Jesus!" she gasped, turning to look at who had addressed her.

"Not quite," mused the young man in front of her. Maude's teenaged neighbor, Gene. "I thought it was you. Haven't seen you in a good long while."

Alma just stared at him and sniffled again, trying to clandestinely wipe her tears on her shoulder.

Gene's satisfaction at his own (to be fair, funny) joke was deflated as soon as he looked Alma in the eye. He'd shot up like a weed in the last few years that she'd been gone, standing about a half a head taller than her now. "Hey...You alright?" he asked shyly.

Alma opted to look past his shoulder instead of right at him. She nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine," she sniffed, trying to sound convincing. "I'm just differently-hormoned right now."

Gene went to indicate that he understood what she was saying but, having quickly realized that he had no clue, pressed his mouth together. "Hm..."

Alma didn't know why, but the presence of this young man that she had babysat in her youth was oddly comforting. She'd been there when he was a crying mess and now he was here now. It felt like something had come full circle. She walked closer to him. He resisted the reflex to back away, placing a hand on his hip instead and forcing a warm smile at her. "Also," Alma sniffled, "everyone is a lying, duplicitous _fuck_ and the world is laughing at me."

Gene cocked his head at her gently, his light blue eyes dripping with sympathy and probably a little bit of _I don't know what to say to that._ "Hey, now," he said in his thick Blaine County twang. "It can't be that bad, right?"

"Oh, it _is_ Gene-o. But today's _your_ lucky day," she said, sticking her finger in his chest playfully.  "'Cause you get to drive the Termite back to Maude's for me so that I don't have to see her again."

Gene's eyes lit up at the mention of that, looking past her at the dune buggy. "For real, Alma?"

"For real," she said, smiling now despite herself at his enthusiasm. His folks had never let him drive the thing himself, always forcing him to walk over to Maude's holding a helmet, timidly asking if one of them wouldn't mind taking him out. Alma had always obliged. Now, as far as Blaine County was concerned, he was a man. And he could drive a fucking dune buggy if he wanted. He had always been such a sweet kid, after all, and sweetness was seldom rewarded in these parts.

She rifled around in her skirt pocket and pulled out her keys, remembering suddenly that she didn't have a key for the thing, and that she'd had to start it the shady way. She turned around and bent over the steering panel, squeezing the wire and throwing the throttle, setting the thing buzzing almost straight away. When she stood up and turned around, she caught Gene in the residual phase of a stare down with her backside.

He immediately blushed and averted his eyes. Alma grabbed the helmet from the bucket seat and walked to him, shoving it into his arms. She cocked her head at him. "Were you staring at my fake leg?" she asked him a low, measured tone.

Gene's eyes were wide with fear and apology. He sort of shuddered before he shook his head vigorously. "No, ma'am...I was...er...I was staring at your rear end. I'm sorry."

Alma considered this a moment before she tweaked his nose. "Good answer." She began walking back toward her car before calling over her shoulder, "Keep it off the highway. You can take it around the track a few times but then straight back to Maude's, okay?" When he didn't answer she turned around to see that he'd already pulled the helmet on, but he did her the courtesy of giving her a thumbs up before eagerly hopping into the seat and taking off.

When Alma got into the driver's seat of her car, she immediately turned the rear view mirror on her face and grimaced at the sight. Her eyes were puffy and red, turning her irises a nuclear fallout green color. "Fuck," she said, carefully pulling tiny gobs of eye gunk mixed with mascara out of her eyes. She needed a freaking shower yesterday.

The drive home was short. Alma walked straight to her house, not wanting to chance anyone else seeing her in this state. She tugged frustratedly at her clothes, leaving a trail of garments behind her on the way to the bathroom. When she was as naked as the day she was born, she straddled the side of the tub and took off her leg, propping it against the sink. Then, off came the liner and the three socks that she'd had to resort to wearing regularly to keep herself comfortable.

She hoisted herself up, steadying herself on the bar the ran the length of the shower, turning on the water and quickly finding an adequate temperature. She stood there for a few minutes, just letting the water run over her body, washing the tears away.

Alma couldn't for the life of her fathom how Maude had thought that this method of contacting her had been acceptable. She'd waited for what felt like a century to hear from her aunt, to be sure, but not like this. Not by essentially getting kidnapped by some speed freak with his own paranoid little footman at his beck and call. Ugh. That was right. She would have to give Ron _what for_ now for being a betrayer.

Alma had spent many lonely nights back in Vice City, listening to sirens and Cubano music in the streets, hoping that somehow those things would come together to form an encouraging chorus urging her to call Maude to clear the air about what had happened between them. It would always happen when her fiance, Piers, was at work. That's always when the longing for her surrogate mother would strike. She'd while the first half of the day away, doing what she could to distract herself until finally...She'd pull up Maude's name and just sort of let her thumb hover over the call button, hoping that some other part of her would take it from there, but it never happened. Because as soon as she'd think that she was ready, she'd remember that she had no idea what to say to Maude, even though she'd thought about it plenty of times.

She wanted to tell Maude that what she had said to her on that fateful New Years Eve had hurt. That it tore her heart to ribbons to know what Maude really thought of her. But that she was all the family that she knew in the world (except for a few dear cousins her age scattered around the country). Maude had raised her. We want the people that raise us to be proud of what we've become. To send us out into the world with an assurance that we'll be fine. Maude hadn't delivered anything like that. Just a lot of disappointment. Still, she didn't want to excise Maude from her life. It just seemed to sort of...happen that way.

Alma soaped up after a few minutes of absently staring at the shower wall, visualizing the water washing her anguish away. When she'd gotten the last of the conditioner out of her hair, she cut the water and yanked the towel off of the curtain rod, wrapping herself up good and tight for the hop to her bedroom for some clothes. Alma dressed and replaced her socks and liner before snapping her leg on and pulling the nylon sleeve up to cover the spookier, more obviously fake parts of her prosthesis while she simultaneously brushed her teeth. She was a talented, multi-tasking self-groomer. She'd cultivated the ability after having a few extra steps tacked on to her morning routine. Once she'd adjusted to not having a leg, that was.

She felt way less hung over and more refreshed now as she stood in the bathroom mirror, putting on a modest bit of lipstick and placing a nice beaded hair comb in her auburn waves, which she'd pulled into a nice side-do as she often did, conjuring June Miller more or less by accident. She never knew who she was trying to impress when she did this every morning. Plenty of days, she wouldn't see or talk to a soul, but she pretty much always did this. Probably for herself. So that she could feel some sense of completion where she was often plagued by the sensation that she really was missing something. And no, it had nothing to do with her absentee parents, who rarely crossed her mind anymore. As much of a bummer as  _that_ was, the whole thing had far more to do with the thing that was _literally_ missing.

Yes, she'd adapted just fine. If living with a disability had been a trade, she would have advanced to the master level by now. But there were times, not _always,_ mind you, that she just really missed her fucking leg even though it had taken its leave of her half her life ago. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot she could do about that. Even if it was just a bony structure wrapped in tendons and tissues and flesh, it had been _hers_. So, yeah, she was bound to get hung up about it once in a while. So avoiding ratty t-shirts and jogging shorts as much as she could was sort of her _fuck you_ to the cruel happenstance that had claimed it.

Alma pressed her mouth into a tissue and pulled it off, dabbing at the few errant smears of lipstick around the edge of her mouth. When all of a sudden, an intrusive thought came into her head. A vague, shapeless, but nonetheless potent thought. About _him. That Trevor._ She'd only met him the night before, but all of a sudden, he was on her mind like shit on Velcro. The fuck. The horrible, horrible fuck. She found her face contorting angrily at the thought of him.

Who in the hell was this asshole anyway? And where were his priorities, exactly? It was pretty plain to Alma that he was, indeed, part of Maude's small circle of friendlies. But why? It was so obvious that he was a criminal. Maude was charged with putting criminals away, but here this guy was all of a sudden. _A friend of the family_ for some stupid reason. Someone whom she'd never crossed paths with since the beginning of his and Maude's apparently lengthy friendship. Had Maude taken pains to keep the two of them separate? Had they struck up their odd friendship while Alma was in L.S. County attending community college and living her newly independent free-wheeling lifestyle? But then where had he been on the odd weekend or holiday?

She felt weird feeling so disgusted by him. It's not as though she was above-board at the moment, for chrissakes. She couldn't really take the moral high ground just because she wasn't _personally_ doling out the drugs to the ne'er do well truckers and bored housewives trying to be edgy. Perhaps it was because he'd been such a ghost until he'd blown into her life in such an unwelcome way. It didn't seem possible for someone like that to go undetected if he had been lingering that close to the periphery of her life for so long.

She'd lied to him about not remembering their conversation. And last night, she'd bluffed her way out of letting him believe that the torrid glances that he'd cast in her direction the night before had had any effect on her. He definitely wasn't her _type,_ that's for fucking sure. But once she'd tired of being scared of him, she'd let her eyes take in his strong, brawny shoulders, his body seemingly skimmed over by the effects of hard drug use. She'd allowed his low voice that sounded not unlike a strong, sturdy hemispherical engine to ebb and thrum through her ears. And there were even a few times when she thought that she might have glimpsed something _human_ in his crazed, sarsaparilla-colored eyes.

Yeah, she'd sort of liked the attention that he'd lavished upon her even though it was too subtle at some times and way too creepy at others. She didn't like that he'd allowed her to feel that way and then took it off the table as soon as he decided to preoccupy himself with her Lost affiliation, which was probably infinitely more loose than he was imagining. Not only had she lied about not remembering, but she hadn't even meant to hide it from him, having deliberately placed her mention of the Lost at the tail-end of their talk, right as she felt herself nodding off. She'd somehow tricked herself into thinking that doing it that way would allow her to opt out of explaining herself later.

She didn't know why she'd told him. Maybe she wanted to get caught by him, though she couldn't really pinpoint why. Perhaps she'd even wanted to bait him a little bit, just for the fun of it. For revenge at him exploiting her the way that he had. Plus, though she was loathe to admit it, especially to herself, she had a twisted lust for a low-stakes chase. If she had been more sober and farther away from sleep and Trevor had stumbled upon her little omission regarding her employment, she probably would have tried to use her wiles to make him back off a bit, but she would have dialed it back just to kick off that chase. Not enough to give him a reason to collect her other leg as payment. But now she had to deal with that bullshit because she had a feeling that he was _not_ going to let that shit slide. Goddammit, she was a sick puppy.

She walked away from the mirror now, deciding that she would spend the rest of her day in her felonious intent to sell fulfillment center. The flakes needed for this shipment were already prepared. She just had to seal them and pack them around the merchandise. When she entered her workshop, she made for the work bench. She'd already vacuum sealed the ice. She pulled the shipping trunk out from under the table and opened it.

For the next couple of hours, she rolled the air out of the bags of soap to keep them small enough to fit into the container. All of the bags already had holes in them so that the scents were detectable from the outside. She packed the soap into and around the merchandise, stuffing any other cracks with rolled up newspaper so that the contents of the container wouldn't be jostled around in transit.

The soap thing had been her idea. She knew that a lot of bored home bounds had taken to making things like this to sell to the San Andrean yokels that thought that they were single-handedly defeating the evil corporate paradigm of the personal care industry. Her ex-fiance's cousin was a member of the Lost. While the guy was a dirt bag, he had no compunction about dropping her name to the higher ups despite the fact that she'd severed her engagement with Piers. They needed someone quiet, that didn't mind taking a risk, he'd told her the night they'd run into one another at a truck rally. They'd make it worth her while as long as she kept contracting with them for six months, give or take.

And thus began her weird little side-business. It's not as though she considered the radio station a career by any means, even though she'd received her degree in radio broadcast. But even though it paid the bills and provided her with a modest health plan, this was much more involved than sitting at a board.

Alma put the lid on the crate and got down on her knees. She pulled her hammer out from under the workbench, where she always kept it, along with a handful of nails. She stuck the nails in her mouth, taking them out to pound them into the top of the crate. It struck her then that she had successfully put in a day's worth of work for the Lost without thinking about Maude or Trevor. That very thought brought her some relief and satisfaction. _Maybe she wasn't as much of an emotional sinkhole as she'd allowed herself to believe,_ she thought as she worked her way around the crate, pounding away thoughtfully. _Maybe she wasn't such a wreck? Perhaps, just perhaps, as long as she kept herself busy she wouldn't be such a wreck with a chronic case of fried nerves-_

Alma gasped when she looked up to see a figure standing in her workshop, dropping the hammer and scampering backward on her ass a little bit.

"Fuck!" she said, covering her face, embarrassed at her start. "You scared the shit out of me."

The figure was, in fact, none other than Bryce Beale of the Lost MC, who was charged with picking up the crates from Alma once per week as well as checking in on her progress once in a while when they had an especially large shipment. The young man held up his hands. "Sorry, Alma," he said softly. He walked over to her and held out his hand. She stared at it and then up into his eyes for a moment before she grabbed the hand and let him pull her up. "I'm sorry I didn't knock. I figured I'd just come on in since you usually have the stereo up kinda loud," he said looking around. "But you don't today."

Alma rubbed the back of her neck, a little bit astonished at herself. She had just realized that she'd worked without turning on music. That was well out of the norm for her. She shrugged. "I guess I just needed some quiet today."

Bryce let out a courteous little laugh and smiled warmly at her. Alma backed up to the work bench and leaned against it, trying to look casual. She was still a little embarrassed at her fright. When she looked back up at Bryce, having broken eye contact, she saw that he was still staring and smiling.

Bryce was...shall we say...ridiculously hot. He was around Alma's age, maybe just a bit older. He was tall and lean with shaggy chestnut brown hair and gray eyes with just the right amount of stubble around his nice jawline. Alma had never let herself stare for too long, seeing as how he was kind of her supervisor and that was just unprofessional. But as soon as he would take off, she'd always peek out the curtains at him, marveling at how such a hot and seemingly courteous dude was running around with a bunch of rowdy fuckwads on glorified big wheels.

Alma cleared her throat and gestured to the crate. "You have impeccable timing. It's all ready for you."

"Great," Bryce said, still staring at her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What?"

"Nothin'."

"Did you remember the hand truck?"

He gestured to the doorway where, sure enough, the hand truck was leaned. "Have I ever forgot?"

"No. No you have not," Alma said with a sedate pluckiness, allowing herself one more dangerous look at him. She'd always thought that those uniforms that the Lost looked trashy at best and totally phoned in at worst. But Bryce looked good in that navy blue work shirt under his black denim vest, lousy with the Lost MC branding insignia. _What a waste of man._

She realized then that she was enjoying the view a little too much and shoved off of where she was leaning, pulling open a door and grabbing a stack of rolled up straps while Bryce rolled the hand truck over to the crate, slipping the lip under the short side. "Ready?" Alma asked.

"Alma, let me," he protested before she could kneel all the way down.

"I'm stronger than I look, Bryce," she scolded up at him.

"I know but...Could you just let me be the guy for a second?"

She twisted her mouth to the side as she cocked her head at him. "I'm not really into antiquated gender norms."

"Please," he insisted through a snort.

"Fine," she said, rising to her feet. She reached over and grabbed a strap off the work bench. She took an end in each hand and snapped the strap once while she stared him down. "But I get to tie it down," she admonished.

"Deal," he said.

Alma walked to the back of the truck and held it upright while Bryce hoisted it up, carefully so as not to topple her over. He held it in place while she clicked each strap into place, jerking the tails back to secure the crate firmly against the dolly. She was a little rough with it, sending the crate swaying while Bryce tried to keep it steady. He laughed nervously.

"What?" Alma jeered blandly. "Can't handle it?"

"No, it's fine, it's just-"

"Done," Alma interrupted releasing the straps. She knelt and stuck her fingers under each one to make sure that all was secure. "That should do it." She stood up and looked down at Bryce, who was still knelt at her side. Staring. At her leg. The right one. That wasn't there anymore.

Alma cleared her throat, which prompted him to look up. But he still didn't stand.

"Sorry."

"You get a good eye full?"

"I said I was sorry, Alma. I guess I just...never got a good look at it. You can't even tell it's not real from far away," he said. Somehow, it didn't even sound like he was saying that just to flatter her. It sounded like he meant it. "First time I've seen anything like it up close is all."

Alma stared down at him. He was awfully close to her, studying her prosthesis closely. It was curious. Most people looked away as soon as they'd figured out what it was.

"You wanna touch it?" she asked.

"Pardon?"

"I said do you wanna touch it? I'll let you."

She saw him swallow hard as he stood up. "I shouldn't have stared," he said, dusting his hands off on his jeans as though he was washing his hands of his transgression.

Alma didn't take her eyes off of his as she backed up and hopped onto the work table. She grabbed his hand and pulled him closer. She lifted her knee and placed his hand on the calve, squeezing his hands over it with her own as she moved his hand up further and further. "It's mostly made of fiberglass and titanium and nylon. And...me, I guess."

"It feels strong," Bryce said, swallowing hard again.

"It is strong. Human engineering corrects the gaps in human perfection," she said, leaning back on her hands, waiting for him to get his fill. Or for her to get hers. She didn't know.

A silence fell over them as Bryce rested his hand on her fake leg, no longer comfortable exploring without her guiding hand. She wasn't really sure what possessed her to do this. Bryce was definitely the kind of guy that she often found herself going for lookswise, but she wasn't exactly looking for romance. Family drama had a way of killing her libido. She didn't let Piers touch her for two weeks after her big blowup with Maude. Maybe she thought that doing something aggressive would give her an edge with him if his club ever decided to start micromanaging her or something. She must have been out of her mind.

"Alma..."

"Yeah?"

Bryce slowly and sort of awkwardly took his hand off and placed it next to her on the table. "Has anyone ever told you you're real pretty?"

"Yeah," she said to him with what she hoped was a warm smile.

"I think you're real pretty."

"You're pretty too, Bryce."

He snickered, giving her a boyish smirk that was plum fucking charming. _Dammit,_ he was cute and, more importantly, he'd help take her mind far away from her aunt and her crazy kidnappy jiggalo friend with the strong hands and the 7000 rpm voice and the tractor beam eyes. That man that had made her feel like a fucking idiot mere hours ago. _Whoa. Slow down, Alma. No need to flip your fucking lid because you've had a shitty day._

"You oughta get this stuff out to ship."

Bryce took that as his cue to step away, demonstrating just how respectful a body could be regardless of whether or not they belonged to a glorified street gang made identifiable by their affinity for obnoxious motor vehicles and meth. He took hold of the hand truck and began rolling it toward the door. Alma walked to the door and held it open for him.

She followed him to his van and watched him get into the back and pull the dolly in. He hopped out the side of the van and walked back to where Alma stood, closing the van's rear doors on the way. He was a little winded from lifting the crate into the back, but he held his composure nonetheless.

"We're gonna need you to pack up a few extra large shipments for us in the next few weeks. I know it's short notice, but it's coming from on high. You think you can handle that?"

"Yep."

"I'll come by and help if you like."

"That's not necessary, Bryce. Thank you, though."

He leaned against one of the rear doors. "It'll be about fifteen extra crates, all told."

"Shit," Alma guffawed. She rubbed the back of her neck and paced in front of him. "Why so much?"

"'Cause that's the demand, Alm. _Now_ will you let me help you?"

She rubbed her eye, with the back of her hand, more than a little nervous at the prospect of spending a protracted period of time with this sweet hunk of male human that she'd sort of just allowed to feel her up if one followed a loose interpretation of what it meant to be  _felt up._

"You'll need at least three or four crates packed out at a time to stay on top of it. You won't have room for all of it in your workshop, so you'd be seeing a lot of me anyway," he reminded her.

"I don't want anyone to think I can't do it."

"So I won't tell 'em."

Alma felt her eyes widened. "You'd keep a secret from your guys for me?"

"Yeah."

Alma considered it for a moment. This seemed like a terrible fucking idea. But he was right. It wasn't wise for her to get too big for her britches. She thought then about Trevor. Another intrusive thought. About how he'd jumped her shit about the Lost. About how he'd tried to chase her when she dodged his questions. About how he seemed to be looking _through_ her instead of _at_ her when he'd inquired about her activities. About how she hated herself for feeling like he was so familiar to her. Like there was something about him that made her feel like he'd always been there. About how _that_ made her feel crazy seeing as how she'd known him for less than twenty four hours. What kind of reactive attachment bullshit was that?

"Alright. Get me an exact figure for what we're looking at so I know how much soap to make and make sure to call me before you come over."

Bryce smiled at her. "Killer. I'll see you then."

Alma watched as he walked to the van and she could have sworn that she detected a tiny bounce in his step as he trounced away. "Later," she called after him.

She walked over to the birdbath and skimmed the surface of the water with her finger as she watched him drive away. She was starting to feel better now. She'd just had too much to drink the other night, was all. Sometimes when she drank a lot, she would get really sad the next day. So it was only natural that seeing Maude after a night of heavy drinking would set her off and make her feel all sentimental for nothing. She'd just broken off her very long engagement and she was back in the town that had devoured her childhood. She wasn't crazy. She was just at a weird crossroads. She was gonna be fine.

The van disappeared after a little while, leaving Alma to stare at nothing. She looked at the horizon, surprised but relieved that it looked like the day was putting itself to bed. She must have been moving really slowly all day. She could have sworn that that crate had only taken a couple of hours. That's what you get for living in the past, she thought to herself. All that contemplation has a way of sucking your day up from around you. No matter, though. She would spend the rest of the day catching up on some soap sculptures and planning on what she was going to do when she could finally think about getting the fuck out of Blaine County for good.

And then, as though she had been thinking out loud and over a bullhorn, he was there. He must have parked out of sight. And on purpose. But there he was, stomping toward her in all his unhinged glory.

"You've gotta be fucking me!" she yelled, holding her ground.

It did nothing to dissuade him though. He walked right up to her, getting two feet away from her body and looking down at her. He was huffing and puffing. There was sweat on his brow and on his body. He looked like he'd just run a marathon to get there. He gripped her by the shoulder, though not hard enough to hurt her. Just enough so that she couldn't forget were his hand was while he stared her down with fire in his eye. He reeked of sweat and diesel and fire.

"Nobody's kidding here, Alma," Trevor said sweeping his hand across the landscape in a show of grandiosity. Alma fisted the hair on the back of her hand because if she didn't do something to channel the intense anger that she was feeling in that moment, she was pretty sure that she was going to throw her first punch in ten years. "Least of all fucking _me."_

"I told you to take it up _them."_

He looked at her, biting his lip with laughter in his eye. They both knew what it meant. She'd just blown her cover, revealing that she did indeed remember their conversation, thus painting herself into a dark, dank, cobwebby corner. "It ain't that simple, _woman._ You're Maude's kin. That makes it personal, which makes it _complicated."_

"It's neither, Trevor. You're delusional."

His face morphed from an angry one to a contemplative one. He turned the side of his face to her and smirked, closing his eyes. And, for the first time in the last twenty four hours, Alma was well and truly and irrepressibly scared of him. He let go of her shoulder and backed away.

"You wanna see delusional, Alma? I'll show you fucking delusional," he warned, pointing at her.

Alma gasped, not knowing what to expect right then, but knowing that she wasn't going to like it. He walked out into the roadway, arms outstretched as though he believed himself to be some kind of prophet.

"I am Trevor Philips, emperor of Blaine County and I am here to tell you all that I have found my royal cohort to rule beside me for the _rest_ of time!" he shouted in his thundering voice, one that had taken on an almost cartoonish quality. He reminded her of a street preacher or an auctioneer that dealt exclusively in body parts. Alma could only stand and gape as he continued. "The slipper fits! She's been awoken by true love's kiss! She felt the pea under all those fuckin' mattresses! She is the one true queen and I _love_ her!"

Some how, the modest amount of hair on his head had fanned out, making him look fifty times more insane than he already did. He didn't seem to notice her traipsing toward him as he continued to shout at the sky. "Bow to your-"

She cut him off by shoving her cupped hand over his mouth and pulling him in by the back of his neck. "Goddammit! You crazy fuck!" He settled right into it, giving her a look that was as close to tame as someone like him could give. "Fine, you wanna talk? Let's talk.  _Inside,"_ she spat releasing his mouth and grabbing him by the wrist. She dragged him toward the house, looking over her shoulder to see if there were any spectators, quickly realizing that she didn't care. She could barely hear his unsteady footsteps behind her over the curse words that she muttered to herself under her breath.

So it had to be like this, then. There was no time to decide whether she was going to tell him a pack of lies or the whole truth because this was happening right fucking now. She just hoped that whatever she ended up telling him would be enough to keep him docile. To keep heads from rolling. To keep it so that she could just do what she was doing, keeping her head down and her nose clean as best as she could while still participating in the illicit but commonplace goings on in this county. At least long enough to run out her contract and figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life. But she was getting ahead of herself...

She didn't know it then, but the next few hours would cement her place in Trevor's purview for the foreseeable future.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't schvitz too much about Bryce. He's not going to be a rival. I do NOT feel like spinning and maintaining a love triangle. He'll be somewhat important later, however. Ahem. Anyway, I hope you guys liked this. Obviously, the next chapter is going to be all Alma and Trevor, so I hope that you guys are looking forward to it as I am writing it. Comments and love keep me going, as always. You guys are too great for words.


	6. Chapter 6

Alma's house was dark. The curtains were a deep blue color and opaque to boot so the last scraps of daylight couldn't get through. The way she strode into the mostly-empty space, immediately making for the kitchen without turning any lights on, told him that she kept it dark in here a lot. Or maybe she thought that if she kept the lights low that she could pretend that he was just a shadow. Trevor didn't usually mind when someone was angry at him or scared of him, but Alma...that girl radiated it. She didn't have to speak to him, he could just feel it coming off of her, like static popping off of a cashmere sweater.

She finally flicked on a pendant light, hanging over a kitchen island topped in ceramic tile. She walked to the other side of the island and turned to face him, leaning on her elbows. Trevor planted his palms on the counter top and stared her down. She was as still as a statue now, just glaring up at him with what could have been contempt or pleading depending on who you asked.

"What is this? You fixin' to interrogate me or something?" he snickered at her.

"It's the other way around, I reckon," she said flatly, sucking on the inside of her cheek.

Trevor inhaled, poised to fire off his first round of questioning, but she cut him off with a raise of her finger. "Five questions," she stated in her velvety voice. "You get to ask me five questions," she said, drawing out the last two words to make her point.

"Not much of interrogation if you get to set the terms," Trevor said with a smirk. "And why five? Why not three? You really wanna keep me here for that long?"

It was more than a little bizarre...that feeling that she was giving him. He was pissed at her for being so pissed at him, but he was really, really starting to enjoy fucking with her. And since Maude wasn't around to stop him, well...

"I'm giving you five because I don't trust you not to ask follow up questions. This way nobody is disappointed," she shot at him.

Trevor slapped his palms down on the counter, a little disappointed when Alma didn't startle but just looked at him with minor irritation.

"What do they have you doing in that little shed of yours?"

Alma was ready for that one, it seemed. "They bring me merchandise at odd intervals. When they do, I pack it in fragrant soap flakes in case they run into trouble during transport. They set the time table and come and pick it up. It's different every time."

 _Shit._ She was being a lot more verbose than he'd imagined she would be. Apparently she didn't need booze to get her motormouth going.

"Where are they taking it?"

"That's not my department," she said, never taking her eyes off of him. She tapped the table with her index finger. "I would imagine that since they want to cover up the smell, it's going somewhere with checkpoints and dogs. Of course, the people in our state legislature have seen to it that you don't need to cross the border to run into a checkpoint, so that doesn't really narrow it down."

Trevor huffed a breath out through his nose. She wasn't wrong. It was less risky to enter restricted air space these days then it was to chance the interstate system. The fuckin' jet fuel required to transport this shit was starting to cut into his profits. If it kept up like this, he'd have to withhold Ron's Christmas bonus again.

"Who's your boss?"

"I'm on a need to know basis."

Trevor guffawed. "And the person your risking prison and probably _death_ for isn't someone you _need to know?"_

Alma closed her eyes and sighed, readjusting herself on her elbows, the new position begetting her some impressive cleavage considering that she was probably standing at about a b-cup. Trevor cocked his eyebrow, tilting his head the way you would while considering a nice painting.

"You sure you want that to be one of your questions?"

"Fuck off," he chuckled at her show of cheek.

She inhaled deeply, considering the question for a moment. "The less I know the better. Even I think so."

"Well, it would appear that way since you aren't giving me dick in the way of answers."

She stood up abruptly, looking at him as though she'd just been slighted by a lover. "Hey, I invited you in here-"

"After you were presented with the possibility of being humiliated in front of your neighbors..."

"...And I've been perfectly fucking honest with you up to this point, alright? You think you could make that count for something?"

Trevor stared her down as he walked backward, toward the door. And fuck him if she didn't look a little disappointed just then. But instead of making for the knob, he flicked on a light, illuminating the rest of the open floor space. He turned around to see what it was that she'd been hiding. It didn't appear to be much. This place was obviously new construction. Probably bought off of one of those people that thought that the Alamo Sea region was going to be the next Mirror Park only to be sorely disappointed when the gentrification proved to be slow-coming.

The place was sparsely decorated, with cream colored walls and laminate wood flooring. There was a great big sectional sofa in the corner but no T.V. Just rows of books here and there. Something caught Trevor's eye. A cabinet inset into the wall over a picnic bench draped in canvas was covered in a bunch of little statues. Made of...soap.

Trevor walked to that wall, taking in the little figures dotting the surfaces. Some of them stood alone, some of them were tableaus carved right into the bar. All of them had detail that only a crazy person could have thought to put into them. He picked one up, examining it closely. It was some sort of weird little primate looking thing with a maniacal look in its huge eyes.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked, turning around. He didn't see Alma right away. She had moved to the far side of the room, curled up in the corner of the sectional. She was staring at him like she was in trouble, waiting for him to dole out some punishment.

"A tarsier," she said almost shyly.

"A what-ier?"

"A tarsier. They-er-they live in the Philippines." Her voice was uncharacteristically quiet. He would have had to strain to hear if the sound didn't carry so well through the emptiness of this place.

 _Fuck me,_ Trevor thought. She was afraid that _he_ was going to make fun of _her._ He hadn't even said a fucking thing about her weird little hobby that may or may not have been a classic sign of obsessive mania and she was already bracing herself for impact. He looked down at the little soap animal again, turning it over in his hand. He didn't have any frame of reference regarding accuracy since he'd never seen such a fucking animal in his life, but the thing was good. Very detailed. Its weird, long little fingers were all uniform. He set it down and faced her, throwing a thumb behind him.

"This what you do for fun?" he asked, making his way to the sofa. He tugged the pants of his leg up before sitting near her. He held up a finger as soon as he made himself comfortable. "That doesn't count against my five questions." He'd meant it as a joke, but now she looked melancholy for some reason. Like she'd been cornered. Like she was a trapped animal that had already been broken.

"What do _you_ do for fun?" she asked him in an obvious bid to deflect the attention on her. It was like that again, he saw. She wanted to study him and not _be_ studied.

At least, that's what he thought. That she was being defensive or something, and he was ready to give her a smart ass answer for her trouble, but he saw that she seemed to be sincere. He got a nice look at her now. She really was a pretty thing. But she seemed to wear many faces. Now that her features had tired of the _fuck you_ scowl that she seemed to be so fond of flashing him, she almost looked like a different person. There wasn't even a scrap of that morning-after misery he'd seen earlier in the day. She was clean, but no so clean as to appear blue-nosed. He couldn't help but wonder then if this was the same person at all.

"I drink, smoke up, shoot things," he said shrugging.

"That's it?" she asked him quizzically. She tucked her legs under her and propped her head in her hand. And just like that, it was almost as though she really wanted to get to know him. Like this was some kind of first date scenario. When the fuck had this become so _civil?_

Trevor let out a petulant guffaw. "No," he said defensively. "I do what I want in the moment. My leisure time doesn't run on a schedule."

Alma narrowed her eyes at him as a counter point to his defensiveness. But her eyes softened after a moment of staring. Maybe she'd seen that she'd stung him a little bit. "You married?"

Trevor raised his eyebrows at her, hopefully conveying to her how ridiculous that sounded. It must have done the trick as she quickly revised the question. "Girlfriend?"

"Negative, Alma," he said with some punchiness, folding his hands behind his head. "This heart can't be tamed. Er, well...It was once, but the lady went back to her husband. She was a real classy, traditional kind of lady," he said, noting the tinge of longing in his voice. He quickly pushed the thought of Patricia away. Now was neither the time nor place. "Why? You interested in snatching me up?" he asked rubbing his thighs at her.

She stared at him sort of blankly with just a glint of sardonicism behind the look. "It was an innocent question."

"Not so innocent coming from someone who not a half hour ago was batting her eyes at some scrawny, leather-clad underwear model. You move quick, don'tcha?"

She scowled at him. "I wasn't batting my eyes at him," she shot defensively. She rose to her feet.

Trevor rose to match her, staring down into her contemptuous angel face. "Well, that definitely looked like more than a _business_ discussion, sweets."

"I guess you would know since you were the one _spying."_

Trevor inadvertently puffed out his chest. "Hey," he growled at her. "I wasn't _spying,"_ he said in a mockingly effeminate tone. "I was coming to see you and I just _happened_ upon your little foreplay session. I'm just sorry the little prick left before you could get to the good stuff." He could hear the disdain in his own voice. The thought of her standing so near one of his sworn enemies, swinging her hips from side to side like a little schoolgirl, shooting him the _fuck me_ eyes was enough to make him sick. She was Maude's family for fucksake. Since he felt like Maude was practically  _his_ family, too, he'd felt like what he'd witnessed was a form of treason.

"There was no good stuff to be gotten, Trevor. It was business."

"Which is a big part of the fucking problem, little lady."

She winced when he called her that. Struck a nerve. Or snapped it right in half, most like.

"I don't mix business and fucking," she said, paying no mind to how far afield she'd ventured from the cliche whose entire purpose was to be euphemistic and therefore avoid what it actually referred to altogether. "And anyway, I'm not really into guys right now. You're coarse and complicated in all the wrong ways."

"Goddammit, woman!" he growled at her.

She didn't flinch. She simply looked down and to the side which felt like some passive form of aggression, dialing Trevor's own aggression up well beyond where it needed to be. The civility was gone as quickly as it had settled in. Being a recreational user of _stimulating substances_ meant that he was perfectly used to batty conversations, ones that quickly veered out of the enthusiastic and got right into the psychotic without a hint of warning. But he was also used to being the facilitator, the pace setter of said conversations. And they usually happened well before he was coming down.

Alma sighed, "Hey, you opened that door, sir. Nobody promised you a bed of fucking roses on the other side." She walked past him, making for the kitchen. Trevor was on her heels in an instant. She got to the sink and pulled a tumbler from the cabinet above, filling it with water from the tap. He leaned against the cabinet, lowering his neck until his face was mere inches away from hers.

"You know, Alma, you might still be a spring chicken, but thirty's a bit fuckin' old to try and get your aunt's goat- _the aunt that raised you, I might add._ This isn't cute and you  _plainly_ don't know what the fuck you're into getting involved with those big-wheeling, drug-loving _fucks!"_

Alma didn't disrupt her long, deep chugs of water, pausing only to fill her glass again. When she was done drinking, she slammed the tumbler down on the counter surface, doing it with such force that it was a wonder it didn't shatter. She turned to him, licking some stray water droplets from her rouged mouth and sticking her finger in his chest.

"You know, I don't know how in the _hell_ Maude found out I was back in San Andreas but if she hadn't found out and gotten _you_ involved, the most I would be to you is a microscopic fucking _fiber_ in the thorn in your side." She jabbed so emphatically at his chest that he really had no choice but to back away slowly as she advanced on him, staring up with steely eyes as she said her piece. "But you seem all too keen to avoid that little _factoid_ and keep _pushing_ my buttons, trying to insert yourself into my business life and _now_ my sex life? Where the hell do you get off?"

Trevor opened his mouth to rebut, but-

"Shut up," she demanded, no longer content to shove her finger into his sternum. Her splayed palm was there now, pressing him backward. "You are a control freak, Trevor. You're used to getting your way by being a rowdy, crazy prick, but guess what? I could give a flying fuck how many people you have under your thumb because I will _never_ be one of them." She reached past him pulling the door open and shoving him out with surprising strength. He gained his footing before he could fall on his ass. "And my shit with my aunt is _my shit._ Next time you show your face around here had better be to serve me a fucking termination notice after you've taken out the Lost MC because you and I have _nothing_ else to say to each other!"

Her voice had grown raspier with each step in pitch that it had climbed before she slammed the door in his face. Trevor blinked back the haze that he was steeped in, brought on by the fucking _nards_ on this chick before he paced in front of her door, the telltale sign of his signature rage climbing.

"Yeah! Well you'd better be ready to receive that termination post fucking haste because I am personally going to sever your contract with the Lost with a fucking chainsaw!"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, I am so sorry that this chapter is so short. I'm dealing with some shit (writer's block) and I couldn't think of how to end this and then I hit the post button and...It was chaos, I tell you. I hope that you're still with me and that this is reasonably satisfying despite its shortness and that. Really, I'm trying. Shit's just wonky right now in my brain. So anyway, I love you. Keep on being awesome <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow...I am duh-ragging ass on this story, aren't I. Oh well. This chapter might seem weird and frenetic and uneven, but I'm doing my best. I hope you guys still like it. You're all super rad.

"She's a _fucking_ nuisance, Maudrey!" Trevor proclaimed as he paced about Maude's living quarters. "She's obtuse and self-destructive and plain goddamn _mean..."_ he growled. "She ain't the delicate flower you think she is!"

Maude sighed, rubbing the ever-tender spot on the bridge of her nose.

"I never said she was, Trevor..."

Indeed, Alma had never been dainty or easy. Not even easy to tears when she was a youngster. She could have had fucking flesh-eating bacteria and you'd never know it by the intermittent stoicism and unbridled giddiness she let loose into the world.

"She's banging one of 'em, ya know? The Lost? The hot, young one?" Trevor said as though Maude would have any idea who he spoke of or what constituted _hot_ these days. "Or, I dunno if she's bangin' him already, but she's fixin' to!"

Maude leaned back in her vinyl lawn chair and shut her laptop, figuring that now Trevor was onto something, her research assignment was done for the day. The wily start-up embezzler with no tech-savvy to match his ambition would have to wait until tomorrow.

"Just what in the hell happened when you went to see her, Trevor?"

Trevor was tugging at his dingy Del Perro Pier tank top and Maude couldn't help but mirror his antsy disposition, tugging at her own muscle shirt in time with him. He was caught in a sort of dance with himself, pacing and then raising his finger as if to say something meaningful and then lowering it to pace again. Finally, after a minute, he collected his thoughts and spoke.

 "Your girl is into some bad shit, Maude. And she's not gonna let up until she's good and dead."

Maude grimaced as she always did when compelled to picture something unspeakable happening to Alma, but it was lazy this time. She'd spent plenty of sleepless nights now, picturing the worst. And somehow, in her waking hours, it had been dampened. The worst case scenarios came to her in sleep. They were personal.

Maude rose from her chair. "Trevor, I _know_ she ain't being a peach where the law is concerned. I figured that out a while ago. We've discussed this."

Trevor looked at her, practically pouting. "And you expect me to ignore that little aspect of her day to day? You thought that I'd just drop her off here and you'd have your twee little forgiveness montage and I'd disappear on the fucking horizon?" he said bitterly.

Trevor was being extra aggro with her. He usually gave her nothing but his effortless, boyish sweetness, but she'd be lying if she said that she hadn't planted him here for her purposes, more or less. She knew this was coming.

"If I'd wanted that, I could have called one of the young morons in my employ in on this. I called Trevor Philips for a reason," she stated simply.

Trevor looked strangely wounded at her revelation, but nonetheless intrigued. He kept one hand on his hip, still pacing a little bit, but in smaller circles as he looked at Maude. "You called me in on this because..." he began, putting the pieces together.

"...Because you are the only one with the wherewithal to act appropriately should Alma come under fire." Maude paused and searched her mind for an appropriate way to put the next bit, staring off into the distance. "And because you would most likely be the headiest source of said fire. I needed an ally in you, Trevor."

"You always have an ally in me, Maude," he said, stretching his arms out into the night incredulously. "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

Maude squared her body with his, puffing out her chest ever so slightly against his challenge. "She would have been a beetle on your boot heel if I hadn't laid the groundwork _just right,_ Trevor. You're impulsive and reckless, but _dammit,_ you get a job done and that's what I needed right now."

Trevor growled. A growl that turned into a roar as he turned his face to the heavens, hands braced hopelessly at his sides as though he were summoning some minor god to help him in his hour of need. An hour in which knocking someone's head off would do nothing to quell his angst.

"If you knew me so well, you should have known that a few thousand bucks wouldn't be enough to satisfy the _bullshit_ that Alma's put me through already!"

Maude was given pause by what Trevor had said. Alma, to her knowledge, hadn't done anything significant to hamper Trevor's normal, chaotic (in the non-hypoerbolic sense of the word) lifestyle. She would have heard about it by now. What had that girl done to her tall, crazy, hellaciously bacchanal friend?

"Trevor? You wanna tell me _now_ what happened when you went to see Alma?"

Trevor, it seemed, wasn't ready to discuss it.

"You gonna put a muzzle on her or not?"

Maude was never one for the outward display of emotions. Even now, the facial expressions and gestures failed her. She sighed again, even more deeply for lack of a better show.

"I can't put a _muzzle_ on my niece, Trevor. Wouldn't want to if I could," she told him, only half-way deceptively. If she had been able to get Alma to shut her damn trap when she was a teenager, she would have jumped at the chance, even if it entailed physical restraint and the use of implements reserved for unruly dogs. "Are you gonna help or not?"

Trevor leaned against one of the pylons tenuously holding up Maude's house with a weary look on his countenance. "Help how?" he asked her. It was plain that he felt betrayed.

"Help me by ensuring that Alma isn't further ensnared by the foul vermin carving out their insipid niche in this county, Trevor. Keep her from getting killed." Trevor's face fell into an almost bored yet inquisitive expression. He was plainly not entirely savvy to what she was implying, so she continued. "Your protection Trevor. I want you to protect her. And in exchange, I'll give my other boys in the field the Trevor Philips rate for capturing Lost members. They come across my radar fairly frequently."

"So..."

"It's a show of good faith. And it will thin out their numbers over time."

Trevor breathed hard through his flaring nostrils, considering what she'd just told him for a long minute before he nodded at her slowly and turned to face her again. "Alright, Maude. But if she keeps pushing my fucking buttons, I reserve the right to put her in her place."

"As long as it doesn't result in further loss of limbs, Trevor..."

...

Know this: When your bosses tell you that they want something done in the _next few weeks,_ they mean it. And they don't forget that they gave you such a loose and vague timeline. In between tirelessly packing vintage ammo trunks with  _you fucking know what's in those trunks_ and twee, Midwestern chic fragrant soap flakes, she was trying to keep her attentions on her board at the station.

The ergonomically correct and otherwise fancy chair did little to quell the aching in her back. She was tired and moreover she was freaking grumpy from her encounter with Trevor and the overall futility of being a human being in a country that wasn't in Europe where there was at least a modicum of pseudo-socialism in many places. If she was in a place that maintained said modicum of pseudo-socialism, she probably wouldn't have had the problems she was dealing with now, at least not to this degree.

She brazenly fiddled with the dials and switches at the board, daring herself to play an Ammunation advert during Jock Cranley's spot. But she just grazed the dials with her fingers, wishing she had the damn stupid motherfucking will to create some depressed anarchy in her place of legitimate work. Just when she was working up the courage to start some shit with the station sponsors for funsies, Ron walked in.

He was identifiable only by his plaid and the fact that he was the only bio organism that she'd seen since the last DJ had walked out with nary a _bye now_ many minutes ago. She looked up at him with sallow eyes. She could feel the sallowness in her very eye holes. She'd been dreading seeing him. She'd been dreading it because after she'd had her lovely little one-on-one with the one and only Trevor Philips, after her mind had drifted from those big problems that concerned Trevor and the Lost MC and Maude, her mind had aimlessly wandered to how she would deal with Ron, giving her an extra and very unwanted dose of dread.

Ron stared at her from under his fisherman's hat, quickly averting his eyes when her's burned a hole into his. She pressed the call button on the board.

"Hi."

Ron blinked back at her. "Hey, Alma."

"They took a ceiling panel out in there. There's some high end to deal with."

"Thanks," he replied seemingly without acknowledging  what she'd told him.

Alma chewed the inside of her bottom lip, resisting the urge to seethe and shake her head at Ron. This was some kind of high road even though she'd been entertaining the idea of planting evidence of alien aircraft in his yard just to spite him for her trouble.

"Have a good show, Ron," she said coldly, letting off the call button with grotesque bravado and leaning back in her chair. She didn't give him the satisfaction or hope that came from looking at him in the eye the entire show. She simply played the adverts as scheduled and thumbed through a trashy magazine while he prattled on about whatever. She didn't care what because even though she probably knew what it was it had fucking nothing to do with her immediate worldly concerns such as having a regional drug lord sicced on her thanks in no small part to the nut whack sitting in front of her now.

Men were lizards and lizards were men. The government was monitoring our physiological ills via hospital records to figure out which of us were too inferior or strong to continue. The Illuminati was _bleh bleh bleh_ involved in some way.

Ron wrapped up and set his headphones gingerly on the table before him, rising slowly. Alma could only hope that he would wuss out and walk right the fuck out of there without uttering a word to her, but before he knew it, as bold as he had the day he'd originally ensnared her, he was in her space, at her side, frowning down at her only minutes later.

Alma pulled spun her chair to meet him, ignoring his averted eyes at what were probably her panties right in his face, since she rarely bothered to cross her legs. Because he was a man. A useless man that couldn't handle her panties up in his face. She snapped her legs shut, suddenly remembering that she didn't want to give him anything that resembled shower material. Because he was the enemy.

"You two-faced fuck! How could you!" she said more melodramatically than she'd intended. She stood up without bothering to reattach Ethel.

"Alma," Ron said defeatedly.

"I thought we were gonna be weird, mismatched friends that taught each other about life and things and you delivered me straight into Trevor Philips' hands! Why?"

"It wasn't anything personal, Alma. Trevor's my-"

"He interrogated me and kidnapped me and took me to Maude's. _Maude's,_ Ron!"

"Alma, I-"

"And then he came to my house and made fun of my sculptures and called me a biker slut!"

Ron's pleading face contorted into a confused one and it was then that Alma realized that she had exaggerated horribly. And it was new. She was usually very calculated in ensuring that she never let extraneous details enter the recounting of any event, much less a traumatizing one. She never had to that do when she was telling the select few in her trusted circle about her accident or about getting dropped off at her aunt's by her parents, never to hear from them again. But for some reason, an angry rap about Trevor Philips just had to be adorned with conversational garlands that included pejorative terms about women and motorbike enthusiasts. 

Ron shook his head as if to shake his confusion away. "I said not to take it personal," he said in his typical high-pitched drone. "He wanted to meet you. And he don't do things the _normal_ way."

"Why did _you_ have to be the one to make that happen?" she barked at him.

"'Cause I was worried that if I didn't help he'd do somethin' _weird!"_

_"Weirder than what he actually did?"_

Ron did something well and good out of character when he growled and punched the air in a fit of frustration. He paced and breathed heavily, wringing his hands. "You don't _get_ it, Alma! You don't know him like I do...Trevor's a-"

"Trevor's a _what?"_

Ron whipped around to meet her gaze and without missing a beat replied "A lunatic!"

Alma stared back at him for what felt like an eternity before she collapsed back into her chair. Ron's eyes were narrowed, but otherwise his face was practically downy with apology. He shrugged.

Alma tilted her head at him. "What were you afraid of him doing, Ron? Seriously, I wanna know."

Ron sighed and took off his bucket hat, dropping his hand to his side to show his defeat. "He scares people, Alma. I guess I thought...Maybe you wouldn't be scared of him if I was there, too."

Alma's brow was so contorted into a confused line that it was starting to ache. "You didn't want me to be scared?"

"I don't ever want you to be scared. Nobody should feel as scared as Trevor makes people feel..."

She leaned back and looked him over good and slow before she said "That's it? Ron, that's weird."

He looked at the ceiling timidly as though he were holding something back. "I might'a been worried that he'd lose his cool with you. He does that sometimes. Especially with people that aren't scared of nothin'."

Alma laughed despite herself, startling Ron out of his wistful little fog. "You think I'm not scared of anything?"

"Well...No, I mean...Look at you. You don't let anything stop you from living your life," he replied thoughtfully.

Alma's heart felt like it had twirled in her chest at his words, at his soft stare. She thought she might cry as she watched him clumsily pull his hat back onto his head. She didn't know why his words had touched her so. Maybe it was how genuine he'd sounded in his delivery. She hadn't heard someone sound so authentic in years. It was a little ironic that it was coming from someone who obviously indulged in the local rock candy, but still. It was sweet. "I'm scared of lots of things, Ron," she said, swallowing a lump in her throat.

Ron shot her a shy smile. "Yeah, right. Like what?" he said, swishing a dismissive hand at her.

"Chickens."

"Huh?"

"Live chickens. I'm terrified of them. Got attacked by a rooster when I was a kid. Never been the same since."

Ron blinked back at her for a moment wearing a blank expression before his mouth screwed to the side in a bid to restrain his laughter. Alma couldn't help but smile back at him.

...

A couple of days had passed since Trevor's meeting with Maude. It was enough time for him to pick at the finer points of her offer, combing over what he'd agreed to with a fine-tooth comb of manic obsession before he decided that it didn't need to be amended. It would be quite enough on her end to pull the Lost off of the streets while he devised a way to push the more steadfast among them out of the picture completely. Plus, he knew how humiliating it would be for them to lose a chunk of their membership base to some bounty hunters barely out of diapers. Simply hilarious...

He conducted business as usual over the next few days while he listened to murmurs of some hundred-year storm due to blow through the state that week. 'Cause of _El Ni ño _or some shit. Nothing too bad, just some gnarly thunder and torrential downpour. He could give a shit, really, but the way these rednecks were talking, you'd think they'd never get to hunt illegally again. The nuttier among the locals thought it was going to be Part Deux of the book of Genesis or something. Whack jobs.

Naturally, though, if Trevor had had a fondness for crow, he would have been dining on it a few days later when the foretold monsoon finally did arrive. He was on his way back into Sandy Shores from L.S. when it started. The Canis wasn't outfitted with a cover. He'd been meaning to put something together, even just a tarp with some duct tape, but he'd had more important things to do. In a matter of minutes, he was soaked, squinting and tearing through the dark while fat rain droplets pinged off the road, creating a disorienting scape before him. He pulled off onto a dirt road where the rain began flowing directly into the outcroppings that all the water had created. He was near enough to home when he felt the water sloshing around at his feet.

He pulled over and opened the door, letting the water pour out onto the ground. It wasn't the most productive, really as the rain hadn't let up in almost a half an hour. He leaned over the open the passenger side door when something caught his eye in the first flash of lightning. Something leaned up against a chain link fence outside an abandoned house. He strained his eyes to see what it was when he saw that it was moving. Or rather that _she_ was moving. He hopped out of his car and made his way to where she sat.

Her fingers were laced into the chain link. Her head was down and she was breathing hard. Her thighs were flecked with mud beneath her skirt and she was soaked, her auburn hair made a deep chestnut by the rain.

"Alma!" he shouted through the whooshing and the thunder.

Her head shot up to meet him. She wore a pained expression. "Trevor?" she whimpered at him.

He knelt down to meet her eyeline. She followed him with her big green eyes, ringed with little smudges of black mascara. "What's wrong?"

He could see now that she was crying, but she stifled a sob and bit her lip. He looked her over, trying to figure out what was wrong with her before he looked around the two of them. The rain was still coming down hard. He didn't waste another moment, scooping her up in his arms, and to his pleasant surprise, she didn't protest. In fact, she let her head fall onto his shoulder, burying her face in his collar bone.

When he got her into the passenger side, he covered her head with a derelict jacket from the back. The ride to her house was short and quiet save for the cacophonous weather. The front door to her house was unlocked, thank fuck. He shoved the door open and flicked the light on with his elbow. His wet boots squeaked on the tile as he walked her to the couch, setting her down gently and taking  a seat on the ottoman across from her. 

When he looked at her, he saw that she still had his coat hanging over her head. She flinched when he snatched it off. He tossed it aside and clasped his hands in front of him, leaning over on his knees. He stared at her hard, wanting very badly in that moment to scold her for whatever transgression had landed her on the side of the road in a rainstorm, but he quickly lost his edge when he saw her still wearing that sad pallor, shivering slightly.

"What happened, kid?"

She pinned her shoulders inward as she shivered. "It hurts," she said in a tiny rasp.

"What hurts?"

"My leg," she said just as timidly.

He pulled her left leg into his lap and looked it over, trying to see if it was broke or swollen or...

"Not that one," she whispered.

Trevor looked at her and then at the prosthetic, staring back at her strangely. "Sorry?"

She looked back at him, buttoning her mouth with a bashfulness in her eye. "It's phantom limb?"

"Huh?"

"The storm did it, I guess. It always does..." she said trailing off.

Trevor glared at her. She'd had him scared out of his fucking wits. It shouldn't have been surprising that he'd been jarred by seeing her like that. It wasn't all that long ago that she'd been screaming in his face and now she looked like a baby cat that had been thrown in a wading pool. "Your leg that isn't there hurts?" he asked dryly.

"That's what I said," she snapped at him, letting an immediate look of regret replace her reflexive anger.

Trevor swallowed hard and thought for a minute. He didn't quiet disbelieve her. It didn't really make sense to him that she would have been shaking and getting soaked _alone_ on the side of the road if she wasn't actually...in pain or whatever. Unless she'd been planted there to ambush him. But no ambush had come. Even the Lost weren't stupid enough to give Trevor a head start.

"So now what?" he asked, shrugging.

She didn't answer, just shivered at him. She was soaked. As was he, but she looked wetter than he felt, the water in her hair dripping off the ends and onto her pale shoulders. He stood up and walked to the bathroom, snatching a towel off of the rack. He was temporarily disarmed when he walked back into the room to see Alma pulling her soaking tank top off over her head. One of the cups of her black bra rode up enough to give him a good eye full of her under boob. _Goddamn. This was something straight out of Bunny Rub forums._ Alma quickly dragged him back to earth by pulling off her fake leg.

He tossed her the towel from a respectable distance as he averted his eyes. Out of respect. For Maude. Alma was Maude's niece, you'll remember.

"I'm sorry about this," she said, toweling off her head as he tapped his foot, filling the air with the sound of his boot squeaking against the tile. It almost sounded to him like she was apologizing to someone that wasn't there.

"Is that a real apology?"

"What do you think?" she snipped.

He turned back to her in time to see her pulling her skirt down over her thighs before she set about toweling the mud off her legs. She looked better already.

"I think you're way in over your head, chickadee," he said, trying to keep his eyes on hers as she toweled herself off.

"What, I'm not allowed to go for a walk because I'm missing a leg? I didn't know that storm was going to get so bad."

"Not talking about that," he said. His truncated sentence gave her pause.

"Please don't make me talk about this right now."

"You don't know what kind of shit you're in with the Lost, Alma."

The strange paternal note in his voice startled even him.

"Deeper shit than being half-naked in my living room in front of my one-time kidnapper?" she muttered.

"Goddammit, Alma," Trevor growled as he began walking back toward the door. He'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit that she kind of had him over a barrel right now. They'd have to continue this conversation another time when she was more clothed. Or he could just go over her head and snuff out her employers in one fell swoop. Of course, he'd have to take that up with Maude since she'd be royally pissed at him if he sabotaged her reconciliation attempts.

Thunder shook the house at the same time that some overhead lightning knocked out the lights. Trevor had one hand on the door knob.

"Wait!" Alma called. Trevor turned to look at her silhouette. The floodlight outside illuminated her features enough to see that she wasn't being so tough anymore. She sighed and squeezed her eyes shut as she made the request. "Please don't leave." It was so quiet that Trevor thought he might have misheard her.

"Come again?"

"I want you to stay," she said more loudly as a transformer a block away blew out, sending out a shower of sparks that back lit her red hair.

Trevor couldn't quite believe what he was hearing, but it didn't stop him from locking the door and it didn't stop his feet from carrying him back to the couch. This was going better than it had last time, that was for sure. He flopped down next to her on the couch and looked at her, not quite sure how hard he was allowed to stare at her. Because he didn't know what he'd been asked to do. Or he didn't know until...

"I can't sleep by myself when it hurts," she said looking at her leg. "Will you sleep here, please?"

Trevor searched her face to see if she was fucking with him. He had more than a flicker of a thought that _this_ might have been an ambush, but her big round eyes said otherwise. He sighed. "What, like, toe to toe or something?"

She shook her head slowly. "I need you to sleep next to me. And rub my back until I can fall asleep." His face must have betrayed some trepidation because she quickly, lowly, and flatly added "Please?"

He gave himself about thirty more seconds to think about it before he pulled his damp shirt over his head by the collar. Alma followed it with her eyes as he flung it onto the ottoman. He turned back and watched her watch him as he untied his boots, kicking them across the floor. He tenuously went for his belt and he was surprised to see that she made no move to stop him from taking his pants off.

When he'd disrobed, she pulled a quilt off the back of the couch and scooted to the edge of the couch to let him lay down. She pulled a pillow under his head and made her nest against his body, pulling the blanket over the two of them. It was as though they'd done it a million times. Their damp skin stuck together as she looped her arm over his body and snuggled in to him, breaking the contact to show him where she wanted him to rub. A tender little spot right between the dimples on her lower back.

"Harder," she commanded softly while he kneaded the spot in little circles with his fingers. She sighed with relief when he'd found the right pressure and rhythm. "Aah, thank you," she whispered into his neck. "You're good at that. Way better than Piers."

Luckily, Alma had placed an arbitrary boundary between their pelvises with a balled up section of blanket. So she wouldn't be able to feel his hard on, which was becoming reasonably painful now. It had been whispering at him from the time she'd pulled off her top. Now it was screaming at him. It didn't help that her soft body was crushed into his. He could feel everything north of her waist. And he could smell her hair, which smelled very nice. Hot damn was he going to have to abuse himself in the morning.

"Trevor?"

"Huh?"

She wrapped her arm around him tighter and tilted her head to look up at him. "I meant it when I said that I'm not trying to mess with your business."

Trevor sighed, not really comprehending what she was saying nor caring. He was trying to talk down his arousal for the first time since he was fourteen years old.

"I know."

He felt her soft breaths on his neck. They tickled a little bit. So did the tip of her nose. He rubbed more vigorously now even though his fingers were starting to ache, hoping that she would fall asleep faster. She was Maude's niece. _Maude's niece._

She started to feel limper in his arms, exceedingly more relaxed with every passing moments until she moved her arm down around his waist, her head heavy in the crook of his arm. The last thing she said before she fell asleep was laden with the heaviness of impending sleep.

"Everyone struggles, huh..." she asked no one.

In a few more minutes, she was out. Trevor, though...Trevor was wide awake.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope that made sense. Also, I apologize for any spelling/grammar errors. I didn't really check it over. I really wanted it posted. Let me know what you think, my lovelies.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exhausting...Bloody fucking exhausting...Ergh...

Alma hardly ever spent time inside the four walls that were meant to be her dwelling place and she _especially_ didn't spend them puttering and looking contemplatively out the window. But today's sun was proving to hot and too bright, blaring cruelly into the desert floor, which was, for some odd reason, especially white. It produced a harsh glare that only the darkest sunglasses could squelch. Besides that, it was really, really fucking hot out and Alma just didn't have it in her today to be out there where she would sweat and probably have to bail out the basin of Ethel for all the sweat.

Two sleeps ago, she had woken up on the couch, remembering only after about a minute of rubbing the sleep out of her eyes that Trevor had been there the night before. He'd left sometime in the predawn hours before she'd awaken,not even bothering to leave a note on a crumpled up cocktail napkin, the fuck. Not that she cared. She was too humiliated by her disturbing display of vulnerability. 

She hadn't been bullshitting him when she'd told him about the pain. It had set in some time after the first rolls of thunder and roiling clouds had made their first appearance. She'd been enjoying a leisurely stroll, long enough for her to decide if she felt like popping down to the bar for a nightcap. At first, she ignored it. And then she'd decided to turn back. And then it hit her full-boar. The debilitating sensation of her tendons being pulled apart like taffy. She'd tried to cheer herself on long enough to get herself home and when cheering didn't work, she started silently berating herself in the hopes that she could shame herself into performing such a simple task. But the pain only grew worse the farther she limped.

Normally, that kind of agony goes away a year or so after one loses a limb. And hers had, mostly. But barometric pressure is a steely cold bitch and she still felt it during the storms as sure as she had when she was fifteen and had first experienced it. Except now she didn't have Maude to cradle her and tell her that everything was okay. To find all the acupressure points that made it go away and to call the doctor on the nights that it got really bad. It was a wonder that she'd survived two hurricanes when she'd been living down south.

Now Alma sat propped against the back of her couch, staring at the glaring, laughing sun from a safe distance and in the company of air conditioning, silently cursing herself for letting her current enemy see her in such a state. And inviting him to stay. _Insisting_ that he stay. Even worse was how much she'd enjoyed his company when he kept his mouth shut and put those huge, strong hands to work. How even though she could feel his hard on through the old throw quilt that she'd placed between them as a barrier, she didn't have it in her to be repulsed by it. She'd whipped her wet clothes off in front of him after all. And he'd shown her a modicum of respect that she didn't think possible coming from the likes of him.

She sighed deeply, not sure whether she should be grateful that she might have actually scared him off enough to keep him out of her business affairs or if she should feel embarrassed for letting him see her like that. Pressing her body into his so that she could take ownership of him long enough to make the hurt go. She knew she shouldn't dwell on it. The damn thing had already happened. But the fact that he'd left before they could share some cleansing awkwardness made her feel _dirty._

It was pretty fucked that an encounter like that could pull something from deep within her that she'd fought for so long. A deep, desperate urge to be mothered. To be told that either she had nothing to be ashamed of or that she was an impulsive, half-cocked brat that needed to be set straight. She ignored it for another moment, pulling wayward bits of down feathers from the sofa before that trusty old impulse set in and she was on her feet, car keys in hand.

The sunlight was almost unbearable. As she drove to Maude's she couldn't help but wonder what the other drivers were doing to offset that discomfort, wondering if they knew something she didn't or if she was just being a raw-nerved baby. When she got to the middle of the road to Maude's she wondered suddenly if this wouldn't be her most self-destructive feat yet. She didn't know what she wanted out of the visit and she sure as fuck hadn't thought very hard about what she might say to Maude when she got there. She definitely wouldn't grovel to her. Or maybe she would. Fuck if she knew.

She stopped in the driveway and got out, surveying her surroundings. The place where she'd grown up. Sought refuge. Found it. And destruction. And acceptance. Surrender. Maude wasn't on the porch, she saw. Her heart started beating and she got a ringing in her ears. She took two steps forward, three back. Maude probably wasn't in. She might have been out on a job. Or schooling some starry-eyed young wannabes on how to track down a bounty down at the learning annex. She wasn't here. She'd be on the porch if she was. She'd barely gotten her hand on the car door, poised to hop in and tear out of there before anyone could see when she heard the creak and _thwap_ of the screen door behind her.

"Alma Jae?"

That aforementioned ringing in her ears? Well, that shit quickly turned took on the force of the Tsar Bell of Russia, if Alma's fucking body had been encased inside of it while a bunch of toddlers with mallets went buck wild. She turned to face Maude. She could practically feel the blood rush out of her face. Maude stood on the porch, fanning herself with a newspaper, holding an amber beverage.

"Hi," Alma replied.

...

Two women, alike in their absolute lack of self-respect sharing Arnold Palmers and avoiding anything that resembled conversation, idle or otherwise were likely a sight to behold to the gadflies buzzing around the ceiling fan. But neither one of them was taking in that view. They weren't even looking at each other. They stared into the tops of their drinks, hoping that they would be absolved of the gridlock that they'd found themselves in. Occasionally, one of them would sigh or sip, but beside that, the radio on the kitchen counter was the only source of sound.

Maude was the first to break, chugging down the last of her drink before rattling the ice cubes around the bottom of her glass.

"Took you long enough, little girl."

"Don't start," Alma replied quietly, tiredly, not looking up from the table.

"I can't start jack when you and I hardly finished our _last_ real conversation."

"This isn't a conversation."

Maude slammed her glass down on the table, provoking Alma to look at her finally. She glared at Alma and pointed her thick finger at her, something she never did. Where Maude was from, it was rude to point, you see.

"Don't. Don't you dare come in here after giving me the cold shoulder for three years and make me the bad guy, young lady."

Alma put her elbow on the table and nested her chin in her hand, glaring back at her aunt. "You're imagining things, Auntie." Alma put her glass to her lips and was ready to take a sip before Maude snatched it out of her hand. Maude stood and stared down at her niece with a strange look that fell somewhere between furious and beaten.

"Did you come all the way out here to gaslight me?" she said, her voice wobbling.

Alma stood then, too. She couldn't answer why she'd come here but she definitely wasn't going to listen to any bullshit accusations.

"I've done no such thing," she defended. She sniffed against the dust in the air. "But I ain't gonna stay if you're just going to throw freaky accusations at me."

Maude shook her head somberly. "Why are you like this? Why do you enjoy making me so sad?"

Alma's heart sank so deep that she thought that she might sink right into the fucking floor. "What?" she croaked.

"You left this place without saying a word. Hardly gave it any thought at all."

Alma bit her lip and blinked back the stinging in her eyes. She sniffed again, this time hoping to keep the tears from falling. "Sometimes saying nothing is better, Maude," she said through strained vocal chords.

Maude sighed and covered her face at those words before letting out a defeated "Alma Jae..."

"Do you remember what you said to me?" Alma said, slowly circling the table to where Maude was. "Do you even _remember_ why I left?"

"I remember that you overreacted."

Alma laughed a dry, squeaky laugh in spite of the tears that ran down her face. It was quiet at first before it reached a fevered chuckle. "How do you _overreact_ to your aunt telling you that you're unlovable?"

"Oh for heaven's sake, child," Maude hissed. She turned away but Alma quickly cut her off, stepping in front of her before she could walk away.

"You said that marrying Piers was a mistake. You said that the only reason that he was with someone like me was because he could manipulate me. That he _couldn't_ really love me because..." Alma cut herself off and looked down at her leg, stifling a sob. She didn't know if she was supposed to be sad or angry. She _did_ know that she hadn't let herself think about this in the time since it had transpired. And now she was dealing with the emotional spillage.

"I didn't mean that you were _unlovable,_ dammit!"

"Oh? Then what was _did_ you mean?"

Maude sucked in a breath and glared at Alma through the side of her eyes and for a second, Alma could have sworn that she was about to get slapped by her auntie. But Maude must have noticed the pain on her niece's face and she quickly softened her features. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, Alma found herself holding her breath, genuinely interested, no _desperate_ to hear what she would say.

Maybe she would say something to wash it all away. Maybe she would say something that would somehow make all the pieces fall together. To make her understand why she was so impulsive and nuts. Why she'd slept half-naked next to a speed freak without fucking him. Like, what the hell was that about? Did it all start and end here? _Say something, Maude!_

Maude didn't say something right away. Not with her voice. But her tired, dull, once-cerulean eyes beamed so much into her head, a body of thoughts vaster than any ocean. No, no great, powerful body of water could have encompassed it. It was the kind of thing that could only come from two and a half decades of maternal love and strife. You've _been chasing something all your life, sweetheart. You never knew it, but you were chasing it. You can't be blamed for that._ She stepped toward Alma. _And after your accident it only got worse. You're a love junkie, Alma Jae._ Alma's knees felt like they were going to give, but she kept watching the wisdom undulating in Maude's eyes, blinking back tears from her own. Maude reached out and touched her cheek and Alma surprisingly didn't slap it away.

"I didn't mean to make you think that no one could love you, Chicken. But Piers _did_ take advantage. Because he was a snake in the grass. I couldn't stand to see it. Desperation made me cruel. And I'm sorry."

Alma felt the air get sucked out of her. She squeaked as she inhaled sharply, collapsing just as quickly into loud sobs. She let herself collapse into Maude's waiting arms, felt the thick, cushiony things encircle her as she shook loose three years worth of angst fleas. She held her hands out rigidly behind Maude's back, not fully ready to commit to this weepy reconciliation.

"There, there," Maude said half-heartedly. After a moment of Alma's house-shaking sobs, Maude pulled her up by the shoulders. "Now...What do you say I make us a couple of turkey sandwiches and then afterward we can go feed Willie-Nelson-the-Pony some sugar cubes?"

Alma's eyes were puffy with tears. The skin around her eyes hot. Only Maude could turn her emotions into a histamine. She sniffed a deep, loud, bubbly snot pocket back and silently nodded back. Things had been set right, more or less. Alma could tell. Because for the first time in three years, she didn't care about losing.

 ...

The fun kinds of crazy people give you the benefit of making their craziness known immediately. The people who plainly don't give a fuck because they don't have the faculties to give a fuck. The street corner preachers, the perpetually naked, the unintelligible. They wear the hallmarks of crazy the way a horny exotic bird wears their plumage.

The perplexing kinds of crazy people seem near enough sane until they show you little fear....Even though the vast majority of the general population decides it's a good idea to circumvent you and your very existence when you're sharing the sidewalk with them. The perplexing crazies whip their clothes off in front of you even though the last time they saw you, they'd made it clear that they never wanted to see you again (or you thought that they had). And then it's all flesh on barely acquainted flesh. And their balmy palms exploring your body in their sleep, touching _everything but_. Their face pressed into your neck as they slur out a sleep-whisper of _don't come yet, baboo_ in their sleep, and you're about ninety percent sure they ain't talking to you.

Trevor's knuckles were alabaster as he clenched his steering wheel. He gnawed on his bottom lip while he looked down on Stab City from a clandestine distance. They really did look like gnats. Insignificant, bumbling around their squalor, a squalor that tried too fucking hard to be squalid. It didn't make any sense. What did she want with these pricks in their stupid little leather-demon uniforms? How was that exciting? A bunch of drones that looked the same, walked the same, rode the same, drank the same beer. Any deviation was met with swift and unoriginal discipline. Is that what she wanted for herself? Good fucking riddance.

He wasn't sure that he'd be able to cull this many with a chainsaw as he'd promised, but this chapter only had about seventeen resident members in the Alamo Sea region according to Ron's intel. The sneaky approach had worked well the last time and there'd been way more back then. His thoughts kept jumping between logistics and...

One of the portlier members of the Lost was pantomiming rough, sloppy coitus when Trevor remembered where he was. And as if he wasn't in a foul enough mood, that skinny underwear model big-wheeler that was always hanging around Alma rounded the corner of the abandoned corner store where they were all hanging out. The kid stopped and looked pensively at his fat friend who continued to hump the air. It was probably as close to sex as the tubby fuck could get outside of the initiation rites of a new "old lady." Pigs. All of them. Pigs. 

He revved up the engine of his truck and threw it in reverse, backing haphazardly into a gully behind him before gunning it toward the main road. He pulled out his phone and rang Ron, who answered immediately, true to form.

"Ron! You seen Alma today?"

_"Nah, Trevor. She took a few days off at the station for personal reasons."_

"What reasons?" Trevor fired flatly.

 _"Personal ones..."_ Ron replied in his spooky voice, the same one he used when he thought he was on to a new conspiracy.

Trevor pulled the phone away from his ear and growled.

"I fucking heard that bit, Ron," he said into the phone when he was done seething. "I mean what is she doing?"

 _"I dunno,"_ Ron answered after a moment, this time speaking as though Trevor had asked him a truly thought-provoking question.

"Well figure it out, alright? Bring something by her house. Soup or flowers or something, I don't give a fuck. Report back when you figure out what she's up to," he said, hanging up the phone.

This might have been the first time ever that he had any shame pawning a task off on Ron. He should have been the one checking up on her. Keeping tabs, making sure that she was making her appointments. That she wasn't missing or getting any closer to the road lice that were holding her captive by contract. But for some reason, he was feeling some shame, shame that he'd suppressed forever and he wasn't perfectly sure why. He hadn't really done anything wrong and she'd started the whole thing. He didn't coerce her into anything. It was _her_ siren song that started it all, that had kept him up night after night since he'd found her by the side of the road.

He couldn't ignore his apprehension, though. Something was telling him to steer clear. He needed to let things simmer before he saw her again lest things get...weird between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends. Thank you for reading. I feel like this fando is starting to lose its momentum, though maybe I'm projecting. For that reason, having you guys about is a nice feeling. I hope I'm keeping you entertained and engaged. Lotsa sloppy kisses to you all.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another chapter. If you guys don't dig this, let me know and I'll try harder. If you do dig...That's cool too. I like hearing that as well. You're all cool as hell. Thank you for reading.

Ron parked his golf cart down the street from Alma's, feeling far too timid to go right up to her house. He could still change his mind this way, he decided. He tugged at his knee brace as he loped across the road, hindered only by a couple of kids that almost nailed him in their souped up dune buggy ripe with the tellings of recent custom work. " _Outta the road, fucker!"_ one of them bellowed in his pubescent voice.

He was ready to pack it in by the time he got outside her house. He stopped and looked around nervously, waiting for his brain to send the message to his legs to high tail it back to his cart. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure what he would tell Trevor. He'd never really had it in him to lie to the guy. Finally, his legs started moving. Unfortunately, they were moving backwards, so when Alma emerged from her shed wiping her hands on a little black apron that she wore, she locked in on his face almost immediately.

"Ron?"

"Hi, Alma," he answered immediately, knowing he wasn't getting out of it now.

Alma put her hand up over her eyes to shield them from the sun. Her skin was dewy with sweat, her wavy auburn hair done up haphazardly in a hair tie. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see how you were. On account of you missing work," he told her just as he'd rehearsed with himself in the mirror.

She stared back at him with a close-lipped smile frozen on her face. "I'm alright, Ron. I had some things to do around the house, couldn't wait."

"Do you need some help?" That bit hadn't been rehearsed, but it came out with uncharacteristic ease.

Alma kept the smile on her face as she shook her head. "No, that's okay, Ron. Thanks, though," she said pleasantly.

"I'm really handy around the house. You got something you need lifted or anything?"

"No."

Ron looked around, hoping that an answer would jump out at him like a lizard skittering out from under a rock. It was then that he felt the paper bag in his hand, the top of it sort of crumpled and damp with his palm sweat. He held it out to her. "Doughnuts from Limited. Fresh ones."

He shoved the bag into her hands. "Oh my God, I love their Donuts!" She gingerly pulled the top of the bag open and gasped. "How did you know I was a bear claw guy?" She pulled out the aforementioned pastry and took a bite, quickly catching a morsel that fell out of her mouth. "Thank you, Ron. I was starving."

She collapsed into a vinyl lawn chair behind her and stared off into space, occasionally biting into her doughnut. Ron took a seat across from her. And watched her eat. She held the bag out to him but he politely and quietly declined. When she looked away, it looked as though she were running through a symposium in her head. Her eyes were contemplative and still as her jaw moved. Finally, she shoved the last bit of sweet bread into her mouth and wiped her hands off on her apron.

"What kinda housework ya doin', Alma? You sure I can't help?"

He felt like a swift, persistent louse buzzing around her head, but he didn't want to defy a standing order from Trevor. He was supposed to see what she was up to. Check for signs of something. Like maybe she'd be shifty and nervous-seeming or she'd have bruises like she'd been roughed up by the Lost. But she wasn't bruised and she didn't seem nervous at all. She seemed very much like her usual self even though Ron had never seen her at home. Didn't really know what to look for.

She shrugged. "I just bug-bombed my house a couple days ago. I had to clean up all their carcasses. It's good now."

And then they stared at one another. Well, Ron did most of the staring. Alma tried to match him moment for moment but was obviously struggling as she kept looking past his shoulder, desperate for a diversion.

"You know I forgave you, right, Ron? Remember, we squashed our stuff?"

He shrugged at her. "I know."

She blinked at him slowly. "So...This is just a social call?"

"Mmhm."

She leaned back into her chair as her face fell into a serious scowl. "This wouldn't have anything to do with Trevor, would it?"

Ron's heart felt like it'd just moved sideways in his chest. For some reason, his physiological response to stress in this moment manifested as a hiccup from deep within his chest. Alma cocked an eyebrow at him but her face was still otherwise. And then the sound of a motor cut through the quiet between them, advancing on them quickly. That diverted Alma's attention, finally.

When she rose, Ron did too. He followed her eyes behind them, where he saw a black van crawling up to road toward them. Banners over wings. A lone driver. "Ron? Er, thanks for the donuts, babe, but we'll need to pick this up later. I'll be back at work this week." She didn't look at him as she flatly recited the goodbye. But once she was satisfied with what she'd been looking at, she looked at him and flashed him a smile that disarmed him for a moment. "Don't tell Trevor, kay?" she finished, touching his arm lightly.

Ron stole one more glance at the driver of the van. It was a young guy. His hair was kinda stringy. He looked at Ron and Alma curiously. Ron took that as his cue to leave. "Yeah, sure Alma. I'll see you at the station," he said.

He almost tripped over himself as he took his leave. Trevor's history with the Lost wasn't Ron's history per se, but Alma certainly shouldn't have to pay for it should they draw that association. He heard the van door slam behind him, heard a discussion that sounded like it was hushed, though he knew that it was normal. And when he knew he was out of view, he broke into a jog all the way back to his cart.

...

The shed was quiet save for Bryce's hammering and the dainty crumpling sounds of tissue paper from Alma wrapping up the soap bars and tossing them into the artillery chests. It had been like this the last few times he'd been by. They hadn't found their groove and Alma was projecting her resentment at the Lost's unreasonable demands on him. This in spite of the fact that she knew that he didn't _need_ to help her as much as he had. He picked up a lot of the slack for sure. But she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of her gratitude because that's the way that she was.

"The last three shipments made it through the checkpoints easy as pie. The boys up top are really happy with the work you've done, Alma," Bryce said to her back.

She simply hummed back at him.

"They like how discreet you are, too. Nobody's heard a peep about our little operation around town. That's a nice change."

"'Kay."

It was quiet for a moment. More hammering and crumpling. Shuffling of feet.

"Loose lips sink ships, you know. We can't really afford that. Not with that Trevor Philips guy still hanging around."

The milk crate full of bars that Alma was moving across her work bench slipped from her hands, spending concentrated bricks of detergent and lye and fragrances rolling across the floor of the shed.

"Shit," she muttered, hoping the utterance would bring her back down to the earth. She felt like she was floating, and not in a fun way. The mention of that name made her feel like someone had turned her inside out. Like the trusty boy scout that he was, Bryce immediately stopped hammering and began helping her put the soap back into the crate. "Fucking butterfingers," Alma muttered to herself.

"You okay?" Bryce asked after a minute.

"I'm fine," Alma lied, hoisting the crate back onto the work bench.

She dusted her hands off before she realized that she didn't remember what she was supposed to be doing. She was all flustered like. It was another minute before she realized that Bryce was staring at her. She did a double take before meeting his eyes. Soft but intense, with the sexy kinds of bags underneath.

"What are you looking at?" she asked playfully before she turned back to the table in front of her. She pretended to straighten things before she deigned to meet his eyes again, this time armed with the half empty doughnut bag gifted to her by Ron. "You in the mood for some sugary, lardy pastry? Huh, Bryce?" She wagged the bag right in his face before he snatched it away, laughing finally. Good. She didn't need another set of intense man eyes on her. Not for a while.

"You, miss Alma, are sure good at avoiding having a serious conversation."

"Moi?" she said with faux haughtiness. Then she thought about what he'd just said. _Serious. This is serious, Alma,_ rang an amorphous choir of voices through her heads. Goddamn, she hated that word when she wasn't using it to her advantage. She straightened up. "What _serious_ conversation?" she asked as she needlessly folded a washcloth before her.

Bryce leaned on the workbench, attempting to meet her eyeline, but she kept folding and straightening and dusting invisible grains of something off the table with her finger. "I was just telling you how impressed the guys are with what you've done. _And_ what you _haven't_ done..."

"I've never been great at taking compliments."

He trilled out a sigh as though she should have known or given a fuck what he was talking about. "It ain't about flattery, red." Alma cringed at the nickname. "It's about...you know, upward mobility?"

Alma didn't want to hear this shit. Didn't want a spiel of any kind. Didn't want to be called on to make any kind of decision. She hadn't been dreading this because she hadn't been expecting it. Even so, it was unwelcome. She was going to run out her contract and then try to forget that she had ever been involved. Bleach her moral slate with lots of volunteer work and crocheted teddy bears sent to orphans in Romania. Toys. For tots. For days.

"If they're impressed with what I've done, I'll thank them to allow me to keep doing it."

"Alma, listen to me, we've all been talkin' and think it'd be better for everyone if you-"

She turned to him swiftly and stuck her hand over his mouth. "Shh," she hissed at him. She waited until all of his articulatory muscles in his face were relaxed and she knew he didn't have anything waiting in the chamber. And then she lowered her hand. "I'm happy where I'm at, Bryce."

She stepped away from him and somehow asserting herself just then did wonders for her self-confidence. At least enough for her to remember what she was doing before he'd gotten her all frazzled. She began tossing bars of soap sideways into the open artillery chest beside her. And then she felt a hand on her back. Bryce spun her around to meet him, taking her by the hips.

"Where the fuck did you come from?" she asked him before he kissed her.

He was swift, she had to give him that. Somehow, even though his timing was a little shit and she hadn't _really_ been in the mood, she found herself enjoying it after only a few seconds. His mouth was soft for a bad boy. Maybe he was a wannabe. Maybe that's why they'd sort of been partnered up. He was a wannabe. She would have been if she had _wanted to be._ Like the drug trade was a fancy dinner party and they were seated at the kid's table together. But what they were doing now was most certainly not child's play. _Oof,_ no...Bryce was not a little boy.

He hoisted her up on the workbench and slipped off her apron while they played tonsil hockey. He was quick at the hand, shoving his fingers inside her camisole, wasting little time before they were on her tits. She couldn't help but shudder a little bit when he started rubbing with the pads of his thumbs. _This was nice._ She hadn't been able to admit it to herself, but she missed having a guy's hands on her.

Big, rough hands on her bare flesh. A pair of eyes staring her down like she was about to be devoured. Big, beautiful ambery hazel eyes- Wait, fuck, no! Bryce's eyes were blue...She settled back into the touch once she'd checked herself. Focused on him. On his mouth. She found herself feeling it as though she was reading braille with her own mouth. Looking for the grooves and the cracks. Trying to see if she could feel that little scar on his upper lip...Wait, fuck, no! Bryce didn't have a scar on his upper lip. That was- No, fuck!

She pulled back and look at him, trying to come back down to earth, to remember where she was. She undid Bryce's belt and didn't wait a minute, didn't spare a second teasing before she shoved her hand into his trousers to take him in her palm. She was gentle. She didn't want to scare the guy off. She just really needed something to anchor her, even if that something was a cute biker's cock.

She rubbed and kissed him while he pawed and squeezed at her. It seemed that he was finding great difficulty keeping that nice rhythm he'd had going earlier. He was fully hard now, his kisses growing sloppier as he leaned over her, grunting and groaning. He busied himself by sucking on her neck and Alma found herself slipping back into that nice, ethereal joy that she had a moment earlier. 

She let herself drift too far, though. Because after a moment, she was back in her house, listening to the thunder and the rain pelting her roof. Being held by a terrifying man several years older than her. A man that smelled like wet dog, but not in a bad way. A man whose arms that she'd fallen asleep in once they'd both steadied their breathing for the grievous transgression that they were committing in touching one another.

She could feel his hands again. They moved in harmony with hers and before long, she was whimpering with him.

_"Tr...Tre...Trev-"_

NO. NO. NO.

She pulled her hand out of Bryce's trousers with a gasp as though she'd felt a venomous snake. It took a minute for him to catch his breath and yet another for him to realize that his hands were no longer welcome on her.

"Whassamatter, baby?" he slurred at her.

"This is wrong, Bryce," she told him, shaking her head. She scooched sideways and hopped down, adjusting her bra. She paced and ran her hands through her hair. "I'm sorry, I just can't. This is so, so wrong." She cringed and wrung her hands. It was wrong.

"Jesus, Alma, relax, it was just a hand job," Bryce said, holding out his hand. "A damn fine one, but still-"

"Not that!" Alma cut him off, covering her face with her hands. She dropped them slowly, feeling so humiliated all of a sudden. "Oh my God...Oh my God, I'm gross..."

Bryce had a pained look on his face as he tucked himself into the leg of his pants and zipped himself up. "Baby girl, I don't mean to be a presumptuous asshat, but you don't exactly strike me as a celibate maiden," he said through gritted teeth, having been left frustrated. "And if you're thinking about joining a convent, you might wanna consider leaving this line of work first."

Alma turned to him, fuming now. She fumed at his cheekiness and his denseness. Because he had no idea what was ailing her. Not a molecule on a scrap of a fucking inkling as to why she was ready to tear her hair out.

"Well, you _are_ a presumptuous asshat and leaving this line of work is exactly what I want to fucking do."

He was tucked again, though still wearing that expression of pain as he approached and took her by the shoulders. "Hey, I'm sorry. That was dumb." Alma grunted in affirmation of his dumbness. "Look, I ain't tryin' to needle you into being my old lady or nothin', okay? We've just been spending a lot of time together and I was attracted, so I made a move. A move that, er, didn't go the way I wanted it to, but..." Bryce trailed off, chuckling at himself.

Alma suddenly wasn't so mad at him. She was pretty displeased with herself to be sure, but he wasn't the problem. She was. Or Trevor was. Or they both were. But not Blue Eyes standing before her.

"I'm sorry," Alma said tersely. She gnawed on the tip of her thumb, speaking flatly. "That wasn't meant for you."

Bryce shrugged at her, his mouth twisted into a crooked smile. "Which part? The fun part or the part where you tore me a new asshole?" he joked. 

"Neither," she said, swatting his arm and stifling a smile.

They both snickered, a relieving reprieve in the tension that filled the room. It was followed by silence and awkward shuffling before Bryce mercifully broke it.

"Look, I know you say you don't want any part of what the boys in the corner offices have in mind for you, but they still want you to come meet with them. Hear them out."

"No."

Bryce's face fell into a frown. "Alma. Come on. You don't want these guys thinking that you're blowing them off."

"I don't want to be _mobilized upward,"_ she said in her best affected snark, fanning her hands out.

"Then tell them that in person," he said, getting close to her face. Being cheeky again, he was. "It's not locked in, they just wanna talk. You should let them. Friday at sundown. Our place."

Alma looked up at him and saw it. _Serious. Ugh._ She didn't feel like fighting. She was still embarrassed. Still a wounded goddamn puppy who suddenly wished that all of her erogenous zones would callous over so that any intrusive carnal thoughts about Trevor would just kind of...flop out of her brain immediately. It was for that reason that she hardly thought about it when she said it.

"Fine."

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit's going to get real in the next couple of chapters. Kisses.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real actual chapter will hopefully be completed this weekend. I hate having full time employment, guys. I want to go back to witnessing the miracle of life twice a week only. Ugh.

Nobody seemed to realize it but Trevor slept sometimes. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it did happen. Much of the time, the images that came to him were fragmented and cast in that nasty, boring blue that they put in cop dramas on TV these days. Images of _old colleagues slash best friends_ being unceremoniously driven into the dirt. And then resurrected only to look wholly disappointed at Trevor's reemergence. Images of countless enemies crossing him and then being duly vanquished, as they deserved. On the ickier nights, his mother might come to him in their dilapidated house up North, barking at him to _be good for Uncle Wesley, I won't tell you twice._

Other times, though, the images came to him in full, painful, over-saturated colour. Buxom ladies in all the hues of the rainbow smiling and giggling at him, beckoning him closer. Images of fire and glory. Of structure and discipline _his way._ Shaping young minds and bodies into perfect executors of a new world order where douchebags didn't rule the airwaves and the streets.

On one particular night, those images soaked in the soppy light of oppressive fantasy visited upon him a different series of pictures altogether. Ambiguous ones that couldn't be classified as being particularly joyful or scornful. They just _were_ and they were telling him something, though he didn't know what and, honestly, he could give a shit. 

There was a tornado. But it wasn't stormy outside. It was as bright and shiny as the day was bleak, but there was a big, mean dust devil dancing it's way through the flat lands of Blaine County. Trevor sat and watched the cyclone ravage trailers and old liquor stores, farmhouses and humans alike. He didn't take pleasure in it, but he wasn't scared, neither.

Just when he was getting cozy with his impending doom, a figure appeared from the horizon, slowly and nonchalantly making its way to wear he sat. A tiny figure in a dusty yellow dress with a train a life all its own, snaking behind her and in and out of her leg(s). Her hair was titian in the sun, blowing in the breeze. Her face all a shadow until he adjusted to the glare and the chaos. She payed little mind to the completely in-tact barn flailing over her head in the dry storm.

"You're _my_ kind of disappointing, baboo," she told him as she raked her fingers gently through his hair. She climbed into his lap. Trevor was reasonably aware throughout this haze that he wasn't actually penetrating her as she ground into him and bit his face. But he was definitely feeling something _funny._ Something that he could have gotten used to just fine. 

The smell of clean linens on a clothesline hit him and, for some reason, that was just the hint of pleasantness that his senses needed to plunge him into ecstasy. The frenzy below his belt line was lengthy. It almost felt like some kind of long con, given the fact that he usually came fairly quickly, immediately descending into the refractory period. This must have been what it was like for chicks. He wrapped his arms around her body, paying no mind to the scratchy taffeta that she wore. He only cared about the feeling of her density and the sexy, sympathetic look on her face as she watched him writhe out the rest of his joy.

He kissed her chest, felt the cold feeling of her flesh against his lips before he looked up at her again. Her stare was blank, but there was something behind it. Something that she was holding onto. And then she was shoving words into his head with her eyes. _Trevor Philips, emperor of Blaine County._ She didn't move her lips. No, she didn't make a sound at all. And she didn't look all that scared when that big, ugly, gray tornado sashayed behind her and sucked her out of his arms...

...

 

Idle hands are the devil's playground. Idle hands that only become idle _before you have to do some shit_ are strictly the province of whatever mischief god you subscribe to. The day before her meeting with the Lost was fraught with idleness everywhere but her mind. Alma sat in her chair, sitting at her board, spinning in circles until the station manager knocked on her window and made a vulgarly circular motion with his finger to signify to her that she needed to roll commercial. Three such admonitions and a write up were enough for her to stop that nonsense. Then she stared at all four radio personalities on her shift while she jerked the drawstring of her hoodie out either side of her hood.

They didn't much appreciate it. They were used to her keeping her head down save for the occasions when she would cock a cynical eyebrow at the deluded nonsense that they spewed into the ether. Each one took it as an antagonism. First, the fundie Christian couple that spewed their hatred of all things secular between 10-11am. Then the gun fanatic who was certain that, at any moment, the g-man bugaboo would splinter his plywood door with a cold, army-issue boot heel and steal his arms. He was done at noon. The lunch time menagerie of other banner red-state stock was next with their recipes for middle-American life. A smattering of others. And eventually, Ron made his way into the chair.

When he was done, he was in front of her, those great big coke-bottle windows blocking her from the full force of his fearful stare. He looked so far away. And Alma couldn't meet him a half or a quarter of the way to make a meaningful connection then. She was lost in a haze of thoughts and an absence of thoughts, too.

"Alma? You alright?"

She looked at his pockmarked face, marred by years of neglect. Like shit luck had followed him around like a cloud, occasionally pelting him with hail stones of misery. She spoke at that face, to be sure. She was never terrifically good at quiet, after all. But when she spoke, her smokey voice was subdued, quiet. Flat.

"I saw this guy in the grocery store the other day...He was holding a baby. A little girl, I think. She was wearing mauve..."

"Alma?" Ron croaked at her.

"Holding someone is so..." She paused staring at the wood paneling behind Ron, waiting for whatever non-thought wanted to make itself known. "I know that my dad held me when I was a baby. He must have..." She shook her head in acknowledgement of the logic behind her empty words. "How do you hold someone and then leave them?"

Ron tugged at his flannel and shifted on his feet. It was then that Alma noticed how filthy his shirt was. He wore it all the time. When was the last time it had been washed?

"Ron when is the last time your shirt was washed?"

"Are you okay? You're bein'... _funny,"_ Ron said, forcing the adjective through his teeth.

"I'm fine," she lied.

"'Cause if somethin's wrong...You can tell me. I can help, maybe."

Alma had a headache all of a sudden, but it was one that she didn't care to address. She just sort of let it undulate through her head. Just what in the fuck could Ron fuckin' Jakowski do to help her?

"Just what in the fuck could you do to help me, Ron?"

"I could-"

Alma shot to her feet.

"Could you unmake the last three years of my life? Could you cut my head open and take out whatever part of my brain makes me walk into traps everytime I step outside my door? Can ya do that for me, Ron?"

Ron held his hands out, obviously poised to placate her. "I'm sure it ain't that bad..." It made her wonder if he'd been listening at all.

He pleaded with her with his eyes. Alma wanted to know what it was he was so scared of when he looked at her the way that he did, but she also didn't have it in her to dissect him right now. She let her shoulders relax. But she was still...emotionally aroused. Her lip quivered. She bit it hard to stop it as though that were ground zero for the humiliating display that was about to take place.

"I'm..." she sucked in a wheezy inhale. "I'm so sorry, Ron..."

"'S'okay?" he said.

Alma shook her head. "No..."

Ron's eyes told Alma to stop but something inside of her wouldn't heed the command. "I have to go meet these guys...in Stab City? And I don't know what I'm gonna do or tell them, 'cause I don't wanna do what they want me to do but I don't have a plan B because I don't want to be a paralegal or anything and-"

"Alma!" Ron barked. She gazed back at him suddenly aware that he was all _up_ in her space with his arms on either side of her, but he didn't dare touch her. His eyes were all crazy serious like he was actually trying to talk to her and not just make her feel better. "What are you doing in Stab City? Why're you going _there?"_

Alma realized suddenly that she didn't want anything to do with this conversation. Like that moment when you realize that you don't want to talk about something because you don't want to expend the energy necessary to form the thoughts that might make you look the right amount of sane or vulnerable in order for the recipient of your complaint to take you seriously and say what you wanted to hear. 'Cept Alma had no fucking idea what she wanted to hear.

She thought of Trevor then. About how he said whatever was on his mind and how it was always pertinent to some damn thing. If he was horny, you knew it. If he was angry, you knew it, and you got the luxury of hearing a vulgar redneck Canuck soliloquy before he doled out whatever punishment he saw fit for it. Why couldn't she just say what she meant without the explosive consequences? Why wasn't there some formula for how to talk back at the world? Fuck the fucking world!

"I gotta go," Alma meant to say before she said nothing, grabbing her bag and striding past Ron.

She walked hard and fast out of the station, leaping the wooden railing and skittering to her car before she could acknowledge Ron's cries at her back. She peeled out of the parking lot before he could block her way. She pulled onto the highway before she could regret not spilling her guts to that weird, plaid-wearing delusional. And she prayed to nothing and everything that whatever shook loose tomorrow would leave her untouched and at least half alive.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno. I just dunno. I liked writing the chapter but I didn't feel the same sense of oomph the way I do when I write a chapter that drives the action along. Anyway, with any luck, I will get that done this weekend. The next chapter is one in which Alma talks to the Lost. And Trevor shows up, too. It's most likely worth reading. Y'all's is good people and I love you.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my monkey angel buns. I'm sorry for the long absence. Had to head back to Wales unexpectedly for a quick but I'm back in the states, trying to get my sleep schedule back on track. Blah, blah. I hope you're still reading. I always love hearing from you.

Trevor sat with his hand clasped between his knees. He tapped his foot, his knee bouncing hither tither while he watched the rash slowly spread over Ron's neck. Ron's eyes were at maximum buggery, looking as though they might jump out of his head and run away. Trevor's own eye twitched as he struggled to contain his frustration. It was the 21st century for fuck sake. There was email, cell phones, text messages...any number of ways to communicate and Ron couldn't bring himself to spit it out.

"Did you wake me up just so I could watch you break out in hives?" he barked.

He rose to his feet quickly from where he sat at his hinky dining room table and began the short shuffle to his bedroom.

"Change your fuckin' laundry detergent and call me when you remember how to form sentences."

That was met with frantic hand waving and nervous grunting from Ron, who stood up then. Trevor didn't have time for this. He slapped Ron on the shoulder. "What the fuck is it? Huh? Are you a goddamn mute sage or something? You wanna write it down for me on a piece of fuckin' papyrus, _oh wise one?"_

Ron paused, staring at him with  vague look of distress on his face. His lip quivered. "Ah-Alma's...Alma's going to Stab City."

Trevor released Ron's arm and let his own drop to his side. He glared at Ron. Surely, he'd misheard him. "When?" he asked flatly.

"I dunno," Ron replied quickly, shaking his head. "She told me yesterday at the station and I didn't know if I should take it seriously or not. I mean, she was kind of all over the place yelling at me and crying...I-I went to her house after she told me, though...Er, well, not _to_ her house, I didn't walk right up to it or anything, but I went there and she was there."

"So when is she going?" Trevor yelled, the tone of his voice betraying the totally rational line of questioning.

"I dunno."

"But you left her house and you failed to call me and let me know what was going on when you found out _yesterday,_ and nobody is sitting on her to make sure that she doesn't get fast tracked into old ladydom? Am I understanding you right?"

"We could go now," Ron replied helplessly, pointing toward the door.

Trevor's nostrils flared as he side-eyed his hapless business associate. "We _could_ have gone _yesterday._ We _have_ to go now." He cast one more lingering look of hatred at Ron as he backed out the door, fishing his keys out of his pocket. He wasn't exactly dressed for war today, wearing his favorite stained pair of sweatpants and Del Perro Pier tank top. But fuck it. If his reputation preceded him in the biker community _as it should have,_ given his legacy, he wouldn't need any intimidation garb.

As he fired up the engine in his truck and peeled out of the yard, his mind flickered on Alma. A half-crazy, one-legged, auburn-locked siren with impulse control issues that made _him_ scratch his head. He knew that she was dim to the danger that she was placing herself in aligning herself with those big-wheeling douche bags, but _really?_ What in the fuck made her think that she could hold her own in the shitty likes of Stab City? If he got her out of there with the rest of her appendages in tact, he was going to have a long talk with her about dirt street smarts.

The sun was high and blaring down good on him and Ron as they rode through the roads of Blaine County, roads that were soaked in a cruel, late-afternoon heat mirage. The weaved through slow-moving tractors and station wagons to their destination, hoping against hope that she wouldn't fall to any number of possibilities that awaited her there...

...

"Keep your head high, don't break eye-contact, and whatever you do, don't bring up his lazy eye," Bryce scolded Alma as the two of them walked side-by side toward the back end of the trailer park. They waded through a sea of leather and denim as Alma tried to ignore the leering stares and subdued catcalls at her back. She hoped that her dark wayfarers were hiding any trace of fear in her eye.

The ride over hadn't been too bad. She was able to quell her nerves with the Warren Zevon CD that had been stuck in her stereo for the past year. It wasn't too bad as soundtracks for sealing your fate for better or worse went. But the second she had rolled up to the trailer park and saw Bryce standing there, waiting to chaperon her to the 'corner offices.' Ugh. As if she could be any more repulsed by the whole exchange, she had to recall the corporate metaphor that he'd used when he lured her here in the first place. But seeing him there waiting for her like they were on a schedule made her queasy because it didn't feel like a friendly chat. It felt like an appointment. It felt official.

 _"Damn._ I love when the foxy redheads go slummin'. Give her hell Bryce!" called some generic, greasy biker.

"Shut your hole, Rudy. This is business," Bryce chided over his shoulder.

Alma looked around the trailer park and saw that many of the trailers were charred husks of former manufactured homes. The ones that still stood around the burned ones had the brown markings of a perfectly toasted marshmallow from the residual heat of structure fire. They were sad and hopeful looking little trailers, obviously traumatized and wounded from seeing their comrades' demise. That thought gave Alma pause long enough for her to realize that she was personifying shitty, shitty little houses to avoid thinking about what would come next.

Finally, they arrived at a trailer that was surprisingly demure looking when compared to the crispy ones and the ones that had been lovingly festooned with reminders that the MC came first. This particular trailer or _office_ if you will was white with a mint green band around it. It looked like it could have been the dwelling of an old couple.

Bryce offered Alma his hand as she ascended the rickety steps. She took it, not wanting to face plant before she had a chance to give a firm _no_ on whatever they were offering. Bryce rapped on the door in an odd rhythm, obviously a code of some kind. The door popped open and there stood a hulking man with long sandy brown hair. He nodded at Bryce before his eyes fell on Alma. He cocked his eyebrow as he gave her the once over.

"This the castile queen?" he asked with a smirk.

"Doc, this is Alma," Bryce replied, ignoring the jibe. "We're supposed to meet with Stu to discuss our business prospects."

Alma bit her lip, trying to stifle the urge to remind them that _no, she was not interested in their business prospects, she just didn't want to get blackballed for blowing them off before she'd heard them out._

The hulky biker shrugged and stepped out of the trailer, allowing the two of them to walk in. Alma crept by, giving the giant a long, lingering stare - which was reciprocated - before Bryce took her upper arm gently in his hand and pulled her inside. She pulled off her sunglasses and tucked them into her shirt collar. The place was dark and dusty, but reasonably clean otherwise. The smell of stale smoke filled the air. Alma's eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness. Once they did, she was startled to see a man sitting in an armchair in the center of the small room, rolling a cigarette.

He was dressed like the others, but he had an air of authority about him. His salt and pepper hair was slicked back. His attention was on the tobacco and paper in his hand at the moment. So this was the white trash version of a mafia don. She'd heard his name dropped before even though he wasn't the one who'd met with her initially to work out the gory details of her contract. But this was who she was working for. The president of this chapter of the Lost.

"She's punctual. Another check plus," Stu said into his hands.

It seemed that the remark escaped even Bryce because his reaction was delayed before he stuttered out "Er, well...Yeah. This is her. In the flesh and on time, Stu."

Bryce was suddenly less sexy to Alma now that she could see how easily intimidated he was by this man. Stu actually looked pretty slight and Alma wondered if aloofness and wasting her time were his only leadership qualities. _Let's get the fuck on,_ she thought, irritated that he couldn't put down his stupid rolly long enough to tell her what he wanted from her. She fanned her arms out as if to say _What the fuck?,_ which finally got his attention.

He glanced up at her with dark, piercing eyes as he licked the paper and sealed his smoke before lighting it and filling the air with blue fog. He pointed the cigarette at her as he spoke.

"Nothing but good things about you coming down the pipeline," he said, taking a drag.

Alma cocked her head at his pruned thought, at the laziness of it. This wasn't the first time that she'd heard that her 'work' was getting positive feedback, but what of it? Anyone with a lot of free time and a fondness for crafting could have done the same thing. There was nothing remarkable about what she was doing except for the time that she put into it and her tolerance for bullshit, which was wearing thin.

"'Kay?" she responded simply and flatly.

"You're quick, you're quiet..."

"Yeah. I can keep being those things if-"

"And by the looks of it, you haven't been skimming any product off the top," he said looking her over.

Alma looked at Bryce who looked back at her with his hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels and smiling a subdued and nervous smile at her. Alma turned her attention back on Stu, suddenly feeling the pangs of confusion ten times harder than before. Did they bring her here to make her employee of the month or some shit.

"I still don't know why I'm here."

Stu got up from his recliner and walked to her, and then around her, the buckles on his boots clanging with each heavy step that he took. "You're here, Alma, because we have a new job for you." Alma stared straight ahead, ignoring the intrusion of his cheap tobacco smoke and his bourbon-laden breath on her neck. "See, _because_ you've been doing such a good job pulling and packing product, we're _way_ ahead of our shipping schedule. That's left us with a surplus of sorts."

Alma finally dared to meet his eyes. "Well, that's good news for me 'cause to be honest, the schedule you've had me on has sorta been kicking my ass, so if you whittle it down to a couple crates a week, I can-"

"That's not how this business works," he said cutting her off. He placed his hand on her shoulder and leaned in. The smoke from his cigarette was burning one of her eyes now, causing her to blink one eye ferociously at him like an aggressive wink. "The supply is different, but the demand is the same. The demand is always for more."

"Uh huh," she said, still blinking, not sure how else to respond. Only now could she see the lazy eye that Bryce had mentioned.

Bryce finally decided to take the wheel on this incredibly slow-moving proposition. "Alma, we want you to run some of the surplus product for us. Just around the tri-state area. You'll never have to set foot east of the Rockies."

Alma gulped. She felt her stomach drop. Bryce wasn't supposed to do the proposing. She had foolishly thought that he would be an ally of sorts, that he would back her up when she said no. But now he was firmly back on the other side of the line, assuming he'd ever been on her side in the first place. She should have jerked him off to completion to seal the deal, dammit.

"I...Er...No," she said as graciously and softly as she could, shaking her head softly in an attempt at deference. "I'm not doing that."

Stu took a long, mean drag of his cigarette. "Why not? We ain't even finished telling you what's in store for you if you do it."

"I'm not gonna live out of my suitcase and place myself at more risk than I already have," she said as firmly as she could. "Besides, I have my job at the radio station."

"You're turning down real money for a piddly radio station gig?" Stu said in a way that would have been incredulous if there was any emotion behind it.

"I like it there. Besides, I have a degree in broadcast journalism, so I'm basically living the dream."

She felt a tugging on her sleeve and looked to see Bryce pleading with her with his eyes. "Alma, you wouldn't be alone. We're gonna have a handful of our girls making runs, too. You'll have each other's backs. And you're perfect for this."

"How the _fuck_ am I perfect for this?" she snapped at him.

Stu cut the air with a harsh chuckle. He hummed as he took another drag of his smoke. "Well, let's see, you're clean, kinda posh, and that _thing_ you walk around on is bound to earn you a few sympathy points if you run across the law," he said pointing at her prosthesis.

Alma guffawed incredulously and started backing away. "Nah...I told you, Bryce."

"Alma," Bryce said in a placating tone. "We ain't done here..."

"I thought you said she'd be cool," Stu said to Bryce.

Alma pointed a rigid finger between them as she felt the anger rise in her chest. "This is _not_ cool. I told you I was fine where I was at," she snapped at Bryce.

"Well, just who in the _fuck_ gave you the idea that we was givin' you a choice, little girl?" Stu shot with almost gleeful anger. His eyes were burning now. His devil may care attitude had evaporated completely.

Alma felt her arm moving for the door knob without her directing it to. She was gonna need to dash. Run home. Grab some clothes. Maybe leave the county until this motherfucker had calmed down and lost any delusions of her running drugs for him. But before she could grip the handle, the door blew open and that hulky sideshow called 'Doc' was standing there, rigid and huffing.

"Stu, we got a problem," he shot tersely.

"What _problem?"_ Stu said.

Doc threw a thumb over his shoulder, still breathing hard. "That psycho fuck is back for more...That Trevor guy."

Stu walked to the dining table and stamped out his smoke before he grabbed Doc by his leather vest and pulled him down to his eyeline. Doc, even though he had a good foot and change on Stu, suddenly looked like a beat puppy. "Trevor? Trevor Phillips? You sure?" spat Stu.

Doc nodded weakly and glanced at Alma without moving another muscle in his body. "Says he's here for the chick."

Alma felt her eyes grow wide. Her breath caught in her throat before she leaned back to look out the dirty window of the trailer. She could see guys scattering, on foot and on bike before she heard the shots ring out. Machine gun fire. And hollering.

She felt Stu grab her wrist and pull her in close to his face. "Did you set us up?" he said, sending tiny spit droplets onto her chin.

"Fuck off!" she trilled, offended at the accusation. How the fuck was she supposed to know that Trevor would follow her here? Er...Well, she remembered suddenly that she'd told Ron about it when she was having her miniature nervous breakdown at the station...Fucking Ron.

Stu shoved her into Bryce, who caught her before she could fall over, and took a gun off the wall before he backed out of the trailer. "You keep an eye on her, Bryce. We're gonna have some questions for her after we deal with this." Doc pulled a gun out of his boot and followed Stu out into the war zone. The sounds were getting louder. The hollering and the gun shots and...An explosion sounded from somewhere at the front of the camp.

Alma didn't realize it, but she was instinctively gripping Bryce tight. "Jesus Christ," she wheezed.

Bryce's breaths were coming out ragged. He roughly gripped her shoulders and pulled her to face him, but she was still trying to look out the window to see if she could see anything. He grabbed her face and pulled it to face his.

"Alma? Did you set us up?" he said through gritted teeth, though he was plainly panicked.

"What? No!" she barked back.

"Then why is he here?"

"I dunno!" she cried, wiggling away from him. "I barely know the guy." Which was kind of the truth, kind of a lie, mostly a cop out.

"But you _do_ know him."

Alma backed up as much as she could before she bumped into the wall. She squeezed the bridge of her nose. "He was hired to track me down last month. A family member recruited him. That's how I know him and that's _all._ I didn't ask him to come here." She decided that it would be best to leave out the fact that she'd been fantasizing about Trevor while she pulled Bryce's pud.

She finally looked at Bryce, begging him with her face to believe her. His face softened a little bit. A hint of understanding, perhaps? It was quickly replaced by a look of panic when another explosion rang out amidst the gun fire. He advanced on her and she flinched as he grabbed her arm.

"We gotta get you outta here," Bryce said.

While Alma wasn't entirely sure what his motives where, if he was going to use her as leverage or help her escape. But she didn't care. Because she didn't exactly want to be there. He pulled her out into the sun, which assaulted her eyes, making her pay for that brief time in a darkened trailer. For being out here at all. He kept her close as they rounded the trailer. Alma looked to see what she thought might have been Trevor's truck, parked haphazardly in the distance. She couldn't see any human souls even though there was plenty of gunfire to suggest their presence.

Bryce was holding her hand now. He pulled a pistol out of his belt as they ran through a hole in the chain link fence. Then they were by the water's edge, running toward a vast expanse of farmland on the entry side of the trailer park. The sounds of gunfire became louder and Alma couldn't help but flinch every time a shot rang out. Once they were a good fifty yards from all that untold carnage, Bryce pulled Alma into some brush. He released her hand and carefully crept out past the brush line to get a vantage point on what was happening in the park. Alma was doing all she could not to hyperventilate. She was suddenly worried that Bryce might have brought her here to put her down like a dog. She kept her eyes on the pistol in his hand. As soon as another loud round of fire came, Bryce flinched and came back to Alma.

Her mind was racing at a thousand miles a second. She tried to center herself with Lamaze-type breathing as Bryce stooped to her eye level. 

"You swear you didn't set us up?" Bryce said to her.

She shook her head fervently, still breathing out the tight circle she'd made in her lips. Her wide-eyed expression and rigid posture must have told him all he needed to know.

"You gotta get out of here, Alma. You gotta run 'til you can't run anymore. And don't even think about going home, ya hear?" Bryce said. "Find somewhere safe."

Alma looked at him, trying to see if he was acting or not. His eyes were soft, ringed by those tired dark circles that she'd been mooning over only days before. "Are you going to shoot me in the back if I run?" she asked. It surprised even her.

Bryce's eyes got wide. He looked at the gun in his hand before he shoved it into the back of his waist band. "Remember...Don't go home," he said slowly before he squeezed her shoulder. Then he gave her a light shove into the direction that he wanted her to go. And she was off. She didn't have time to think about whether or not he was going to shoot her. Part of her must have been reasoning that it was better than looking down the barrel of a gun and having that be the last thing she saw before the lights went out.

She ran and ran and ran. No shots. She didn't know why Bryce had let her go. There was no doubt that there'd be hell to pay if any of his buddies were still standing. How had things escalated like that? Sure, she figured that it warranted a stern talking-to, maybe a half-hearted threat from Trevor, but a fucking _firefight?_ She was missing something, she was certain.

Those and more thoughts raced in and out of her head as she ran until finally, she the pain caught up to her and she began to straggle, her prosthetic side growing stiff and sore. She couldn't bend it, so she sort of limped before she had to stop and bend over to catch her breath. She couldn't hear shots anymore. She looked up to see that she was by the racetrack. The farm on the east side of it was quiet. She couldn't hear sirens or motorcycles or an ambling redneck truck engine.

She continued on her way, limping along until another sound cut through the sound of her ragged breaths. A small engine, like a dirt bike. She froze. Bikers didn't ride dirt bikes, did they? That would get them kicked out of the MC, right?

She looked up and saw something appear over the horizon. It was barreling toward her. Suddenly, she could see what it was making that buzzy but solid engine noise. A dune buggy. A familiar one. She squinted against the sun to make sure that she wasn't hallucinating before she began waving her arms frantically at the driver. And they must have noticed her, because suddenly the buggy wasn't cutting switch backs into the hillside. It was making a beeline for her. She limped farther, trying to close the distance as fast as she could.

The buggy came to an abrupt stop at her side and the helmeted young whippersnapper in the driver's seat pulled his helmet off. It was Gene, who was all smiles and bright eyes until he saw the state that Alma was in. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she steadied herself against the frame of the dune buggy.

"Alma?"

She didn't give him much of a chance to look her over before she gimped to the passenger side and flopped down into the dune buggy, manually lifting her leg securely into her side.

"Drive, Gene-o. Drive now. Fast. Thataway," she panted pointing toward Sandy Shores.

Sweet, young Gene didn't make another peep, dutifully pulling on his helmet and cutting the wheel hard toward the Shores. They sped along as Alma stared straight ahead, almost catatonic, not wanting to chance a look back to the direction she'd just come from. She was lucid enough to recognize that this changed things a bit. She was going to have to find a place to hang her hat. And she really only knew one place where she'd feel safe. She shouted so that Gene could hear her over the engine and through his helmet.

"Take me to Maude's, Gene..."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you see any glaring errors before I have a chance to go back and re-read let me know. *Kisses to you all*


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends. This one's a quickie, but I decided that I've been neglecting this story for a little too long. I hope you all had a Merry Merry ;)

He alternated between belly laughing and feral howling while he scrubbed the stink of blitz off of himself. His shower had been neglected for the better part of a week before he finally shoved the hinky-ass broken door open and turned the ungodly hot water on himself. Trevor scratched and scrubbed every part he could reach while he stared at the steam dancing around the ceiling. He could still see the melee and smell the burning tires. And he didn't have it in him to feel guilty about any of it. About not de-escalating even though he knew Alma had been in there somewhere. Those fucks had started it. They'd been asking for it.

As soon as the leather-wrapped, moustachioed riffraff had been put down, scared off or otherwise suppressed, he'd sent Ron to scout for Alma with a swift kick in the ass before driving home alone. He wasn't ready to see her quite yet. Not without knowing what to say to her. What he would like to scream at her or hiss at her face. All he could do now is scrub...

...

Ron intercepted that dune buggy quite by accident. He had been ready to pack it in early, all keyed up and ready to sleep for many days afterward. Like always. But fate had other plans for him. Or rather, Trevor had other plans and fate decided to smile on those plans. Because as the sun was going down on Blaine County and Ron's legs were ready to give for all the running, he finally spotted her over a ridge just beyond a field full of empty oil drums. She didn't see him, though.

Ron couldn't see who was driving the buggy, but he could see Alma just fine. She was standing up in the bucket seat, gripping the roll bar with both hands and facing backward while the wind tore through her hair. She was sweaty and wild and frantic looking. Looking back toward Stab City like her life depended on it. She didn't seem to see Ron as she and the mysterious driver disappeared over a sandbar.

She looked okay, he figured. A little fried but otherwise, she seemed alright. He hobbled toward the main road, knowing that there was no way in hell he could catch up to her. Maybe he'd catch up to her a ways down the road.

...

Maude had been enjoying a reasonably quiet afternoon when she'd heard the clattering of the storm door practically bouncing off its hinges. It was an especially sticky day in Blaine County, the humidity having reached what Maude could only guess was a thousand percent, but the swamp cooler that she kept stocked with hefty chunks of ice seemed to be cooling her off some while she idly tossed clothes and sundries into her overnight bag. She was due to leave for a conference the next day, but she was taking her sweet time in getting ready.

"Hold on!" she barked at the anonymous intruder on the other side of the door. She dropped another chunk into the styrofoam cooler and gave the little desk fan a hearty _thwap_ to encourage it. She began to hobble to the door but didn't make it two steps before the interior door swung open and Alma stumbled in, breathless and sweaty.

The young woman braced her hands on her thighs and coughed through her heaving breaths before she stood erect to look at her gobsmacked aunt. There were faint little mascara trails under each of her eyes and somehow, she looked more shocked than Maude felt in that moment. Alma seemed to shake that off after a moment of the two of them staring at one another before she turned around and faced the door, giving a wave to someone outside.

Maude joined Alma in the doorway and looked out to see Gene, the neighbor boy sitting there in the Termite, in a cloud of dust, with his helmet in his lap, waving back at them like a doofus.

"Gene, what the hell are you doing?" Maude called, pushing through the hinky old storm door. "That crazy shut-in of a mother has been calling me every hour on the hour checking with _me_ to see if her son's still alive!"

"I was just...givin' Alma a ride home, Maude..." he said with an air of obliviousness that made Maude worry for the kid's sanity. _Just what in the hell had Alma done to the boy?_

"Well get on home before she sends a state trooper to my door, will ya?"

Gene gave a half-hearted nod and a wave. "Bye, Alma." He shoved the helmet back onto his head before revving the engine and peeling out of the drive. Maude gritted her teeth as she watched the dust collect in the air at Gene's tail before turning to Alma. She wore a blank expression, though it could have just been the shroud of the weather-worn aluminum door screen obscuring her expression.

"You wanna tell me what in the hell is going on, young lady?" Alma asked as she shoved her way back into the house. Alma stumbled backward to give her aunt a wider berth and perhaps to avoid her wrath. She quickly collected herself, though, shoving a sweaty lock of hair out of her face.

"Would it be okay if I crashed for a few, auntie?"

Maude was taken aback at the hubris. First, Alma comes blowing into her house like a bat out of hell and then she asks for a place to hang her hat with zero explanation? Uh uh. Girl knew better than that.

"First, I think you oughta tell me just what in the hell is going on, Alma Jae. Why do you look like you've just been put through an autoclave?" she retorted, noting the flush in her niece's cheeks.

Alma looked around the room in search of a suitable answer but, finding nothing in the many generations of family members and kitschy art on the walls, finally looked her aunt in the eye. She gulped audibly before answering.

"I think I got myself into some shit. With a gang. And, er...I don't feel safe going home." She seemed to take in the weight of her own words as she closed her eyes and collapsed backward into a dining chair.

The old woman inhaled sharply through her nostrils, her mind immediately flashing on the leather and chrome worshipping morons that Alma had been gallivanting with. The bastards had already sent three of her best deputy bounty hunters back to her with stained drawers and bruised egos. "I knew this would happen," Maude shot without thinking.

Alma opened her eyes and narrowed them at Maude. It immediately reminded Maude of the face she wore when she was just a girl and Maude would wake her up for school. "Quelle surprise, the great and clarvoiyant Maude knew I would fuck up," Alma snarled. Maude couldn't tell if the girl was really angry at her or if she was more angry at herself. She'd always been a self-deprecating little brat.

Maude narrowed her eyes back at Alma and crouched as far as her damned back would allow, getting into Alma's scowling face. "I'll thank you to watch that mouth of yours, little girl. This is still a God-fearing house, I'll have you know."

Alma's stare softened, but it was still trained on Maude. "I didn't do this on purpose, Maude. I mean...Not really. I was trying to fix things..." she stammered before relenting at her piss poor inability to explain herself when she was caught.

Maude retreated and made for the pitcher of sweet tea on the kitchen counter. "One does not simply _fix things_ with a bunch of woman-hating tweakers, Alma Jae. You grew up in this county. You know those ain't the type of folks you should'a been running with."

"I wasn't _running_ with anyone, auntie!" Alma trilled, rising from her seat. "I _thought_ that I was working for myself, but apparently nobody honors contracts anymore." It was almost adorable, really. The way that Alma rationalized things when they didn't go her way. The girl had twenty odd years of getting herself in trouble; With the law, with the lawless, with herself, and of course, with Maude. But she'd never sharpened her rhetorical skills. Never found an argumentation style that helped her case. "Hey, you going somewhere?" Alma asked, almost effortlessly switching gears.

Maude carried two glasses of sweet tea to the kitchen table. Alma was staring at the over-stuffed overnight bag on the coffee table.

"Well, I _was_ headed to a conference for bail enforcement agents in Las Venturas. Thought I'd do a little networking, pick up some new tricks but _now-"_

Alma cut her off with a simple glance. A puppy-eyed, repentant glance that disarmed Maude for a moment. The old woman couldn't help it. That look didn't show itself all too often, but when it did, it worked a kind of magic on her. Alma had never been manipulative. When she wanted something, she found a way to get it and if there was any push back...Well, Alma came out swinging to defend her right to get what she wanted. She didn't need to resort to emotional manipulation. For that reason, Maude could see that Alma really was penitent.

"I didn't mean to fuck up...er, I mean... _ruin_ your plans, Auntie."

Maude snickered. "It's just as well. I'm not sure an old hide like me would get a lot of business cards in a sin city like that."

Alma grabbed Maude's face gently and cocked her head. "Don't say stuff like that. You should go."

"Yeah right, and spend the whole time fretting after you? No sir..."

"I'll be fine. We might have the same last name but if the Lost had done their homework, they wouldn't have brought me on. Ya know, knowing I had an aunt in law enforcement or whatever?"

Maude let that warm her heart. She liked when people legitimized her business by referring to it as _law enforcement._ "Alma..."

"No, for real," she pleaded. "I can take care of Willie-Nelson-the-Pony while you're away. It's the least I could do," she shrugged, looking away. And that was probably as close to an apology that Maude would get for having to put up with Alma's reckless ways.

Maude thought for a moment. There was no way in hell she was going to leave Alma to fend for herself should the Lost come gunning for her. But she also knew that if she hovered over Alma, the girl might take it too personally and take off again. Besides, she could really use the networking opportunity to grow her business. People were getting too sneaky with their crimes these days...

"I suppose..."

"Good!" chirped Alma. She took a glass of sweet tea and chugged it down before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I'm gonna go shower. You don't have any of my old clothes left here, do you?"

"In your closet," Maude sighed, stifling the urge to call Alma out for halting their conversation to use the facilities. It was a bit rude, really. She sipped her tea and listened to Alma digging through her bedroom closet, flinging clothes onto the bed. A moment later, the young auburn-haired beauty emerged from her bedroom with a fist full of forgotten garments, waving them at Maude to indicate that she was set before disappearing into the bathroom.

Maude chuckled despite herself, shaking her head. It wasn't long before she could hear Alma singing over the hiss of the shower. It was time to make her move. To clean house before she took off for Las Venturas. She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jean shorts and scrolled through her recent contacts until she found the one that she was looking for and dialed.

 _"Hello?"_ came the gruff but familiar voice.

"Trevor. It's Maude. Look, I got a favor to ask..."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it was so short, but I ran out of juice. I'll try to psych myself up to write more. You are all the bomb. <3 Happy New Year!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Long ass, unwieldy chapter ahead.

Trevor looked to the box of salvaged goodies sitting in his passenger seat. He was at the end of Maude's road, slowly collecting the piss-proud swagger it would take to face Alma. The goodies in question was a smattering of things that he'd grabbed from hers, thinking that in the best case scenario, it would score him some brownie points, but if the opposite were true, that he could hold them hostage until Alma found it in herself to be civil with him.

In addition to a few clothing items, he'd picked out what he though were the best of her weird little soap sculptures. There was no way he was going to bring her every single piece in her creepy little museum, so he used his own impulse as a metric and grabbed the most detailed ones. A coyote, a cactus, a tableau of birds in a cage, a really spooky disembodied hand, and a startlingly accurate bust of Maude. He figured she should have them since there was a perfectly good chance that her little gallery would be torched before too long. He also supposed that Alma had gotten used to jamming when she got herself into a tight spot and that's why she lived so light, so she didn't need to keep every last one. Good thing she caught on to that habit by the time she was thirty. He sure as shit wished that he'd done so for himself.

Surprisingly, he'd slept just cherry the night before, even though Maude's phone call was still fresh in his mind. _Look after her for me?_ she'd asked in a sturdy voice, obviously trying not to come off as _too_ desperate. Even more surprisingly, he hadn't dogged out, which would have been his right, goddammit. He had better, more productive things to do than to babysit a grown ass woman with a death wish. And eyes like fallout. And soft palms. And a soft belly that he really wanted to shove his face into.

He knew that nothing was going to make him rise to this task with a smile. He was kind of hoping to be done with this stupid little chore. A chore that had a fucking name... _Alma._ Even so, he gave a shit. He didn't want to, but he did. About Maude, about suppressing the Lost, and yes, about that little dream-infecting harpy. He threw the car into gear and gunned it the rest of the way to Maude's house.

...

"Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck _you_ in particular, Lazarus. I wish that Coyote had finished the job on you," Alma practically chanted as she tossed chicken feed into the coop (from a safe distance). The icky little birds flapped their wings and pecked at the ground. Lazarus, who had miraculously survived the aforementioned coyote attack, had a little difficulty with the feed seeing as how his head was now perpetually cocked at a forty-five degree angle.

She was glad that Maude had waited until _after_ she had grown up and left the house before getting chickens, but she didn't see why having farm fresh eggs was worth having miniature raptors anywhere near your home. If she had remembered that the little fuckers had needed feeding, she might have looked elsewhere for safe harbor. She still had a hand full of friends creeping around Blaine County as far as she knew. But here she was, holding up her end of the bargain.

The early afternoon sun felt nice on her back, though she thought that she could feel a little sunburn coming on around the straps of her long, black sundress. She was suddenly regretting dressing like fucking Wednesday Addams on a bossa nova beach holiday, but it was laundry day, and there was no way in hell she was going back to her former abode to retrieve more threads.

Alma was finally feeling relieved, more or less. Not to say that she felt _okay_ with everything that had transpired, but she felt like she was off the hook. Sort of. Not entirely. But every time she felt that feeling of imminent doom swell inside her, she was able to put it down for a few hours. The one thing that hadn't really assuaged was her self-loathing. She felt like a moron. Like she couldn't stop stepping on landmines. Like all this time, she'd been drifting through a field but couldn't stop to look at something shiny before _boom,_ the fucking thing would go off whether or not she'd actually stepped on it.

She was a self-saboteur. She couldn't seem to get from one life stage to the next without pulling the walls down around her. Whether it was switching majors just before she had enough credits to graduate college or running out on her impending nuptials, she just couldn't seem to hold shit together. Worse was that she hadn't yet figure out if she didn't take these things seriously _enough_ or if it was the opposite. That she took them _too_ seriously and then freaked out before she could see anything through. She'd played this game with herself and her life for as long as she could remember and she could never seem to break out of that cycle. And now she was three fucking decades old. Wasn't it time to get serious?

She began grinding her teeth at the thought, but was suddenly distracted by a noise behind her. Foot steps. They were too even and few to be the pony's. She turned to see who it was and was immediately disarmed to see him standing there. The fucking _nads_ on this one. Seriously. She felt deflated and yet, paradoxically, she thought that she might actually have wanted for it to be him standing there. Fuck if she knew why.

"Trevor?" Instead of some snappy, declarative _in the flesh!_ type response, she was met with a scowl. A broodiness that she hadn't yet seen him wearing. She could see it even though he wore sunglasses. Saw it in his mouth, which was the second most expressive thing about him aside from his usually-crazed eyes. "Er...Maude's not here."

He stopped suddenly, putting one hand on his hip and the other on the fence post beside him. She wasn't sure she liked it. She looked up and down his long body, clad in denim that had seen better days and a Del Perro Pier t-shirt with a stretched out collar (any other time, she would have let herself laugh at the image of Trevor at fucking _Del Perro Pier_ ). Clothes that looked like they'd been fought in. His brawny arms were covered in fresh-looking cuts and bruises, probably from what had transpired out in Stab City. Alma felt a little pang of guilt right then. She didn't know why, though. Fuckin' guy had started that whole debacle without her input or even seeing that she had left the premises beforehand. She crossed her arms in defense, responding to the little war that was unfolding inside her head.

"I _know_ she's not here," he said in a low tone, one that she'd never heard, and one that, incidentally, sent a tingle down her back. Boy, was _he_ full of surprises today. "Wouldn't need to be here if she was."

Alma's brow knitted for a split second while she mentally-solved what was a pretty easy puzzle, really. "Oh, for fuck sake," she muttered, realizing that Maude had called _him._

"Hey," he said, advancing on her. "I'm not sure I like your tone, Alma. That little stunt you pulled the other day threw a pretty _big_ fuckin' wrench into my week, ya know. Had to cancel a plane trip down south to deal with it."

Even though Trevor's body was squared with hers, even though he was a head-taller, and even though his finger was pointed at her, Alma stepped to him. The anger was rising in her. It was _his_ fault that what should have been a peaceful bowing-out for Alma turned into a fucking gun battle. And now he wanted to make her feel shitty because he couldn't perform his nefarious plane-related functions.

"What _stunt,_ Trevor? I went to go secure my freedom from those pricks and _you_ just _had_ to show up and start shooting-"

 _"They_ drew first blood-"

"So from where I'm standing, it was _your_ stunt that set all this off."

He pulled off his sunglasses and bent down to get closer to her face. She could see his eyes now. They were narrowed at her, determined, but not without that feral scariness that seen just about every time she was in his presence. She could hear the unsteady breath from his nostrils; no, she could fucking _feel_ it on her chest. He might have been trying to keep his cool. Or maybe he was trying to scare her. She couldn't tell. But she didn't like it.

She had her own feral side, too, though. A side that showed itself in many ways. Sometimes it was about as wild and ferocious as anyone could imagine. Not now, though. Now it was tender, if not a little wily. She instinctively reached out and grazed his bicep with her finger, tracing a long, mysterious bruise down to his forearm. The thing was hot to the touch, even on already sun-baked skin. He snapped his head to the side to watch her hand. And then he slowly looked back at her.

The look in his eye began to soften. She retracted her hand, but he snatched it back by the wrist. Her breath caught in her chest as he pulled her arm to his chest, causing her to stumble into him. She didn't dare take her eyes away from him, though she badly wanted to. His eyes moved all over her frightened face. He bit his lip and nodded, like he'd just worked something out.

"Let's go," he said, releasing her arm. He began to walk away as Alma stumbled forward, catching herself before she fell to her knees. She rubbed her wrist where he'd grabbed it.

"Where?"

He disappeared around the corner of the house as he called out a single, unsatisfactory syllable over his shoulder.

"Out."

...

Trevor hadn't said a word to Alma the entire ride over to the airplane hangar. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he ground his jaw from left to right, picking at the steering wheel with his thumbnail. She hadn't put up much of a fight when he told her that they were going. Why hadn't she? Well...to fuck with him, mostly. To see if he was bluffing about hanging out with her the whole time that Maude was away or not. And she couldn't help but wonder if it was working, because he was being uncharacteristically quiet. She didn't know if she should find it funny or if she should be scared. She _did_ know that, no matter how much she wanted to push his buttons, that she would _not_ proceed without thinking out every step very carefully. She was impulsive, but she was trying to curb that a little bit, especially after her recent brush with dangerous men.

Now she was propped up on her elbow, staring out the passenger side window and twirling hair around her finger while she watched Trevor and another man conversing. He'd told her to wait and, in a bid to keep up the whole _fucking with Trevor's head through compliance thereby testing the very limits of his psyche_ thing going, she'd simply shrugged and said "Okay."

The other man was Hispanic. Early forties most likely. Over several minutes, Alma watched their mannerisms go from reasonably casual, where the other guy was leaning on the great big hangar while Trevor was speaking slowly and deliberately if his hand motions were any indication, to a little bit more of a tense situation. Body postures became more rigid. She could catch a raised voice on the breeze every couple of minutes. The other man's chest puffed out as he pointed his finger at Trevor. Trevor responded by making great, wide loops around the guy with his arms splayed out, pacing stiffly.

Alma started to feel herself getting a little bit nervous. You'll remember that it had only been a few days since she and Trevor were in the same place and things there had gotten incredibly messy. While she hadn't seen Trevor open a can of mayhem on the bikers, she suspected that it might have started out very much like this. She didn't want to see any murder today, but she didn't want to intervene, either. Her involvement never seemed to yield positive results.

She began to breathe slowly, in through her nose and out through her mouth. _Find something to focus on._ The other guy was wearing a red cowboy-type shirt. The cotton, button-up kind with the ornate threat work about the shoulders. _Focus on the designs in his shirt._ She'd always thought that those shirts were kind of dorky. Like something that Johnny Cash could pull off, but the rest of the world couldn't. _There are roses in the designs. Look closely. You can just barely make them out from here..._ As the two men carried on, Alma found herself wondering if Trevor owned a shirt like that. He wasn't very country, but he _was_ an outlaw. That was certain. He could probably fill out a shirt like that nicely. Hell, he could even leave the first few buttons open. Show off some of that brawny chest of-

 _Bam._ The other guy went down like a ton of bricks when Trevor socked him. Alma pulled her sunglasses off to see if she had actually just seen that, standing up in the truck in time to see Trevor pointing at the grounded man, shouting some unheard admonishment at him. And then he was headed back toward the truck while the other guy pulled himself up out of the dirt. Alma didn't make any move to sit down abruptly. She just kind of froze while she watched him skulk back toward her.

Trevor climbed into the truck and huffed breaths of anger and exertion through his nostrils. Alma could swear that she heard a growl emanate from somewhere deep inside his chest. She felt her pulse pick up, felt that same strange chill down her spine. There must have been something about that tone...that  _frequency._ It made her feel... _funny._

Slowly, Trevor turned to look at her. His eyes weren't _that_ narrow, but his brow made him look like a prehistoric ancestor, one that could and would rip someone's arms off without giving it a second thought. Alma could feel her mouth hanging open. It had been a shitty idea to try and toy with him so soon after what happened. She could see that now. Now it was time to conciliate him by any means necessary.

"Can I buy you a drink?" she croaked out.

...

Trevor stared Alma down while he nursed his beer. She was preoccupying herself by sucking on a lime to relieve herself from the burn of her tequila and taking her sweet fucking time doing it; all the while staring at him with a look of half-apology. Like she was doing penance instead of finding relief. She discarded the lime rind into a red plastic fast food basket left there by whomever had occupied their table before them. She coughed and wiped some drool from her bottom lip before folding her hands in front of her.

He almost wanted to laugh at that weird, prim pose that she'd just struck in response to the tension. But he wasn't going to give her any relief yet. It was obvious that she was caught off guard by his little, _ahem,_ scuffle at the hangar. She hadn't signed up to watch him lay out his business contact, but he had, and he was going to enjoy her skittishness about it.

It wasn't as though he had planned shit that way. No, all he had wanted to do was to go and _calmly_ explain to his contact why the drop down south was going to be delayed for a few days. When Trevor had _casually_ mentioned that there was a woman (read: Alma) involved, it had set the fuckin' guy off like he'd just walked in on Trevor fucking his mother or something. First he got all lippy, and Trevor gave him a warning. Then dude started speaking Spanish at him, which, as a non-Spanish speaker, Trevor found a little rude...

"Do you need another?" Alma asked him quietly.

"No," he snipped. He knew that she just wanted to get up from the table so that she could have a break from the awkwardness. "I'm pacing myself."

Alma fidgeted before she picked up her beer and took a sip. They'd been there for about twenty minutes and she was, no doubt, used to conversation picking up by now. She took a deep breath, and, after a minute of toe-tapping deliberation, asked "Why'd you punch that guy in the face?"

Trevor cocked his eyebrow at her, surprised that she had the hubris to ask that question _now._ Now he had a choice to make. He could say nothing and glare at her menacingly and soak up her discomfort or he could tell her that _she_ was more or less the cause of the brouhaha back at the hangar and create _new_ discomfort.

Trevor let his mind wander back to the hangar. He could feel his teeth gritting as he thought about the guy barking Spanish at him even though he knew full well that Trevor didn't speak it...Of course, there was one phrase that Trevor did understand, one that might have glided by someone else's ears, fast as the guy was speaking. But not Trevor's. Not when he was already irritated with the turn that things had taken, so his senses were ratcheted up well above where they needed to be. So, when he heard the phrase _pinche puta_ escape the guy's mouth, he didn't need to do any advanced calculations to know _that_ phrase was being directed at the woman (read: Alma) in Trevor's explanation/story. And he wasn't having any of that. So he decked the fucker, but let him walk away with his life and most of his teeth.

Trevor watched Alma relax her posture as something passed over her face. Something sprightly and mischievous and when she leaned over on her elbows and tried to suppress the smile playing on her pink lips, he knew that he'd lost his edge with her again. She'd located her temporarily misplaced brass balls and that shy, unobtrusive little thing that she'd been for the past few hours was going back in her closet. _Great._ He'd have to spend the next seventy two hours resisting the urge to gag her and store her in the beer cooler at the liquor store.

"Did he rip you off or something?" she asked quietly, coyly in that silky voice of hers.

"Nobody in their right mind in this county _rips me off,_ Alma. Naw...You know what? Nobody in this entire fuckin' _state,_ " he spat.

"Did he give your contract away? Threaten you? Blackmail you?"

Trevor took another deep sip of his beer and waved the empty bottle at the cocktail waitress. He avoided Alma's gaze for a minute until he saw that she wasn't just trying to push his buttons. The mischief had faded a little bit and now she seemed to be showing a little sincerity.

"Did he insult you? Or someone you care about?"

Trevor rolled his eyes and signaled the cocktail waitress again. He wasn't used to getting ignored around these parts. He slammed the bottle down on the table. _"Fuckin' Christ..."_

It was then that he felt Alma's hand take his. She stared at it for a minute, running her thumb gently over the splits that they guy's teeth had made in his knuckles before she met his eyes. "You should clean these up with some iodine or something. The human mouth is full of bacteria."

Trevor swallowed hard. She was doing it again. That thing. That thing like the thing she did the night he found her out in the storm. What the fuck was that? He still had a bunch of hours before he was going to be relieved of his mission. He couldn't have her touching him and... _Jesus..._ looking at him like _that._ She had this look on her face like she wanted him to say something. Normally, he had plenty to say and he was faulted for it on numerous occasions, but he hadn't really been prepared this time. Maybe he was going soft or some shit.

Alma let go of his hand, looking all sheepish. "It's gonna be a _looooong_ weekend if you keep giving me the silent treatment."

Trevor sniffed. "Long, short, who give a fuck? I was asked to sit on you and make sure you behaved yourself...Make sure nobody came looking for your head, little Alma," he lilted at her tortuously. Now she was staring daggers. "And I can do that just fine. With or without the small talk."

Alma crossed her arms and stared hard at him, telling him "You know, I get that you're mad that I went over to Stab City without your _blessing_ or whatever, but you forget that _I'm_ still more than a little pissed at _you_ for that whole clusterfuck." She ignored Trevor's guffaw. All of a sudden, he was practically giddy at what _she_ must have to say about the whole thing. "But I'm still trying to have a conversation with you. You know why? 'Cause I don't want to hang out for three days with some fucky acid-trip version of a secret service agent that won't talk to me or look me in the eye."

Trevor chuckled and grazed his lip with his thumb at her cheekiness. It was all he could do, really. It's not like he could hit her. "So what? You wanna play some fuckin' Scrabble, Alma?"

"Well, I'm not going to sit on the couch and paint my goddamn nails and flip through a gossip rag while you sit there pouting the whole time," she snipped back at him.

Trevor scooted his chair closer, taking care to get well into her space. She didn't retreat, but he didn't really give a shit. He took exception to being called _pouty._ "What'll it be then, you little battle-ax? What is it going to take to make you cooperate until Maude gets back?"

She blinked at him slowly, considering the question for a minute. "I need to go retrieve something. From the hippy camp."

"What? Come on!"

"It'll only take a second. I'll let you chase off all the trustafarians if you don't kill or maim any of them."

_"Let me?"_

Alma ignored him and quickly downed the rest of her beer before pulling some bills out of one of her high-heeled boots and tossing them on the table. She abruptly got up and grabbed his hand, pulling him out of the dive bar. Trevor could only hope that the  _thing_ that she needed to retrieve wasn't going to be some crusty boyfriend that she'd stashed there for safekeeping. 

...

Dark fell quickly after the two of them left the bar. And perhaps it was the darkness that made it so, but Alma was suddenly being very cagey with Trevor, declining to answer any questions about why they were going to the hippy camp in the first place. Instead, she pointed out landmarks. _That's where I got the scar on my elbow. That's where I went to second base for the first time. One of my friends got arrested behind that motel._

He gave up after only a minute, figuring that he probably wouldn't like the answer anyway and if worse came to worse, he could rely on his short temper and a bit of panache to get him through the whole thing. Finally, they pulled up to the camp. The darkness obscured the loud colors that decked the hill, but anyone could tell where they were at.

Alma wordlessly exited the truck and made for the hill while Trevor made for the small contingent of wannabe bohemians around the fire.

"D.E.A.! Put your hands up and don't even think about running!" he trilled on his approach.

He hadn't been sure what to expect when he made his entrance like that. He kind of figured that they would try to stand their ground and fight for their _civil liberties_ , given that this type really liked it up their on their high horses. But they scattered instantly. A deluge of young people clad in crocheted bikinis and cutoffs and headbands bolted every which way, though it soon became clear that they had all come together in the same van. The only straggler was some shirtless little twenty year old kid, high out of his mind, who tripped when he darted out of a tent by the fire. While the kid was on all fours, Trevor decided to encourage him with a firm kick in the ass, which set the kid upright. He ran barefoot toward the train tracks as his friends in the van had abandoned him.

Trevor pulled up his pant legs and took a seat by the poorly-tended fire, tossing tiny pieces of kindling onto the puny flames. He looked up toward the hill. He could scarcely make out Alma moving around by one of the murals. Fuck only knew what she was doing up there. He turned his attention back on the fire, wishing suddenly that he'd brought a gas can with him. He would love nothing more than to torch those little fake bohos' hunting grounds right about now.

After a few minutes, he looked up to see Alma coming toward him carrying a bundle under one arm. Every part of her that wasn't covered by her black dress looked translucent by the flame except for her hair. 

"Good! You got what you came for. Can we get out of this shit hole, already? I'm catching too many _good vibes,"_ he griped, ignoring the light, pleasant citrusy smell that he caught off her when she sat next to him.

"That'd be a waste of a good fire," she said.

"Wasn't so great when we got here. Guess none of them hippies ever went to scout camp."

He was surprised when Alma giggled through closed lips at that throwaway comment. He watched her smile fade a little as she tucked some hair behind her ear and looked down at the package she was holding. She seemed to consider the thing, wrapped in brown paper and butcher twine, before she offered it to him.

"What's this?"

Her eyes moved around and her mouth screwed to the side in a way that made her look downright fucking cute while she decided on an answer. "Recompense."

"Recompense?"

"Uh huh."

It became obvious that he wasn't going to get a satisfactory answer, so he ripped some of the paper off, throwing it into the fire. He tilted the package down so that he could make out what he was holding. Firmly packed, opalescent yellow crystals. Crank. She'd gifted him with a shit-load of crank.

"Where'd you get this?" he asked, capturing her gaze.

"It fell off the truck. Literally. Several weeks back, I was taking a packing break and I found it in my little side garden. This spazzy little guy that helped do the deliveries got careless and dropped it when he was unloading the van. Or maybe he was stealing, I don't know."

"And you didn't give it back?"

"They would have cut that guy's hands off. I was actually there that time when they did the count. Nothing was off."

Trevor looked at her profile, all orange and shadow. She was a little kid trying to please a big kid. Trying to appease. "So what were you doing with it? You don't do this stuff."

She was quiet for a minute before she shrugged. "I don't really know. Guess I was saving it for a rainy day." She looked at him then, rubbed her lips together. "You can offload it. Save yourself a cook. I know it doesn't make up for whatever you were going to do down south, but I meant it when I told you that I wasn't trying to mess with your business, Trevor. I really wasn't trying to fuck anyone over. Not you. Not them..." she said, trailing off.

Trevor set the stuff off to the side and turned to her. "You know you could have come to me about whatever it was they were trying to make you do. I told Maude that I was going to watch your back."

She shook her head back at him, slowly. "It wouldn't have changed anything."

"You put yourself in real danger."

Alma let out an unrestrained yet humorless laugh. "I'm well _a-fucking-ware_ of that, Trevor. I was there..."

Trevor's eyes roamed all over her. She was back there. She was back there now, he could tell. She wasn't a hardened, seasoned criminal. No, she was just dipping her toes in and she got stuck in a shit heap. Trevor knew the realities of the business. He could have laid into her right then and there, telling her that it was naive for her to think that it was going to end any other way, but he didn't. Didn't want to, in fact. He felt a sudden, nagging urge to put his hand on her back. To rub it and knead it like he'd done the night of that storm. When she'd done all but beg him to stay with her. There wasn't any danger right now, but part of him wished there were...Something for her to beg him for.

He stood, shaking those thoughts from his mind. "Let's go."

"Where?" she asked quietly.

"To continue our driving tour of beautiful Blaine County!"

...

"I can't believe you brought me here," Alma mused, looking around the interior of Rex's Diner. She twirled her fork around her plate of mostly-eaten French toast. "Maude used to bring me here after church when I was a little kid."

"I never took Maude to be a church-goer. I mean, I know she loves her maker and all, but she's mite anti-establishment, career choice notwithstanding." Trevor took another bite of bacon, washing it down with a mouthful of coffee while he waited to hear more about this _church business._

Alma dropped her fork and leaned back in her booth, rubbing her stomach lightly. "We stopped going when I was, like, I dunno, thirteen? That's when they started getting really keen on attacking the gays." She stared at the table and moved her tongue around to dislodge some stray foodstuffs.

"That's the American model of the religious-industrial complex, innit? Ignore the fact that all those millionaire megachurch talking heads are curating a harem of rent boys while they demonize everyone else?"

"That's about the size of it," Alma agreed with a resigned smile.

The fell into a comfortable silence for a while. Alma twirled a strand of hair and watched the thinning traffic out of the window. Trevor watched Alma, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. This was sort of nice. They'd come a long way in the past several hours, volleying for control of the situation until they struck some kind of easy equilibrium. It's almost as though they were two nice, normal, grown human beings that had chosen one another for company. In a way, he supposed that they had. And this wasn't the first time.

Trevor kept his trap shut when the irate waitress delivered their check, reminding them snarkily that the diner closed early on Fridays, though she didn't provide an explanation of why. Alma shot Trevor a sardonic smile with the cock of her eyebrow. Her lack of offense was enough for him to keep from calling the waitress a bossy cow, and minutes later, they strode out of the diner just in time for the lights to go off at their backs.

Trevor took in the sight of the great big purple dinosaur that kept vigil several yards away. Alma joined him at his side, staring up at it with him.

"So ridiculous," she muttered.

"What?" Trevor said. He gestured at the grandiose, tacky mascot. "That is a prime example of Americana. It's what makes all the other nations in the world want to be _just like us!"_

"Yeah, but think about it, Trevor..."

He turned and looked to see her studying the statue with a pensive look on her face. He looked back at the statue. "What's there to think about. It's a dinosaur holding a giant hot dog."

"Right, but what's the implication here? I mean, if the lavender-colored dinosaur actually existed in prehistoric times, where in the hell did he get a hot dog?"

"Huh?"

Alma ignored the interjection and continued. "And if the dinosaur _survived_ the dinosaur rapture just so that he could stand outside of a greasy spoon, then did the establishment's owners _furnish_ him with the giant hot dog? And why hasn't he eaten it? That doesn't reflect well on their business."

"You're overthinking this, Alma."

"I was scared of that statue when I was a kid," Alma said, derailing her previous train of thought. "I was really scared that it was going to come alive and kill me."

Trevor couldn't help but laugh at the image. Not only of her being afraid of a fucking lavender-colored dinosaur made of fiberglass coming alive and killing her, but of her being afraid of _anything._ It seemed ridiculous right now for some reason.

He began to stride toward its enormous purple legs, turning to make sure that she was following him. She did, slowly, with her hands clasped in front of her an a twisted smile that told him that she was a little embarrassed at his reaction. "That's probably why they gave him the hot dog, little lady. To make sure it didn't feast on the flesh of kooky little redheads."

The diner staff slowly puttered out of the blackened restaurant, taking their leave of them while Trevor and Alma puttered around the dinosaur. After another moment of quiet, and once they were alone, Trevor looked up from where he dug his heel into the dirt by the dinosaur's foot.

"Ya know, that day out in Stab City...I...I wouldn't have gone if I thought you were gonna get hurt."

Alma looked up from where she was leaning with a look of surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Ya see, kid, I know..." he began shaking his finger at her "...I know why you were there. You went because you wanted to stop yourself. You wanted to scare yourself out of doing something that you knew you shouldn't be doing in the first place."

Alma dropped her hands at her sides incredulously. "No, I wasn't," she defended.

Trevor took a step forward. "Yes," he said tersely. "You were. Because you get stuck a lot, Alma. I can tell that about you. And when you _do,_ the only way you know how to un-stick yourself is by doing something crazy. Because you'd rather have a world of shit rain down on you then be stuck."

There it was. He had woken up that morning unsure of what he'd wanted to say to her, but there it was. Problem solved. Or maybe he was creating another problem. He didn't know. Alma's chest was rising and falling quickly, like she was trying to control herself. She pressed her lip into a hard line.

"Well, if you're doling out free advice, Trevor, then maybe you can tell me what you'd have me do instead," she said, resigning herself to the truth. Not putting up much of a fight at all, but plainly not wanting to give him the idea that she _liked_ what he was saying.

He walked toward her, watching her eyes grow a little wider. He backed her against the lavender behemoth, planting his hand beside her head. "That's just it. I wouldn't tell you to do anything different." She stared at him quizzically. "If something scares you, you gotta do something bold. That's what you did. I took it personally, but I probably would have done the same fuckin' thing."

He was rambling now and he didn't know why. All of a sudden, that easiness between them felt heavy and static-y. She cocked her head and stared hard at him while they listened to the occasional car passing them, the sound of crickets. It could have been seconds or hours. He didn't know. But it was _her. She_ broke that static when she did what she did next.

Trevor didn't comprehend it while it was happening. He watched her do it, sure, but it wasn't registering right away. He watched her pull each strap of her dress off her shoulders, still looking at his face like she was staring him down.

"What're you doing?" he asked, feeling like he'd been sedated or something.

"Being bold," she said without missing a beat.

She reached behind her and unhooked her bra, letting it slide off her shoulders. She leaned back against the statue and stared at him. He didn't know where to put his eyes. He didn't know what this was. All he could see was her face and then her tits. Little white tits with soft little nipples blushing up at him, conspiring with her eyes to hypnotize him.

If she were just about any other woman on planet earth, he would know what to do right now. But she wasn't. She was her.

"Alma..."

She seemed immensely dissatisfied at his inability to act right then, so she pulled him closer to her by the waist of his jeans and lifted his shirt up. She ran her spindly little fingers over his belly and his waist and then something clicked. This was bad. Bad, bad, bad. This wasn't what he was supposed to be doing. That chastising voice that he seldom heard was quickly suppressed again when she undid his pants and slid her hand inside.

Fuck it. Fuck it all. She was no longer something that he had to _deal_ with. Once again, she was flesh and blood and fingers and _holy shit...so nice._ Time went away again. Stopped mattering. Who knows how long they were there. Her, pressed up against the foot of a great big gaudy dinosaur. Him, gorging himself on every part that he could get to.

Nope. Time didn't matter for the fucking dinosaurs once they got snuffed out, and there was no reason for it to matter for Alma and Trevor just now.

...

Trevor woke up with his face pressed into the over-starched hotel sheets. They reeked of bleach and they'd left marks all over his arms. He looked at the clock. Nine-thirty. Not a terrible time to rise considering how late he'd been up. How late _they'd_ been up, that is. He reached over to the other side of the bed, but didn't feel anything. There wasn't a person there, just more crispy sheets.

His groggy head shot up and he looked around the darkened room. He swallowed the drool that had collected inside his cheek during sleep as he slowly pulled himself up.

"Alma?" he asked the darkness.

He hadn't realized it until it stopped, but he heard the sound of water cutting off, which explained the ambient hiss that had kept him half-asleep. He blinked sleep out of his eyes and stumbled toward the source of the sound. He opened the bathroom door and saw her sitting on the edge of the tub. 

Her hair was more than a little askew. She was wearing only her panties and she had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth as she rolled one of the little socks over the bottom of her amputated leg. She looked sleepy as she grabbed her prosthetic and put the limb in there, shoving it forcefully in, a gesture that, when paired with the cigarette, was oddly inviting. She stopped and took a deep drag off her smoke and that's when she noticed him.

She smiled at him lazily through a plume of smoke. Her mascara had bled a little trail by the outer corner of her eye and she looked good enough to devour.

"Morning," she said softly.

Trevor took a knee in front of her and gripped her waist, running his thumb over her soft stomach. "I thought you left."

She flicked her cigarette into the sink and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Nuh uh."

He leaned in and smelled her neck and held her body close. "You want me to take you home?" he sighed into the side of her face.

She was stone silent for a moment before she responded.

"Where's that?"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends. I was feeling shitty for not giving those of you still reading a decent-sized chapter so, like an absentee dad that suddenly becomes interested in a relationship with his children, I overcompensated. I hope that it was satisfying. Do let me know what you think, good or bad. I think I cleaned up most if not all of the typos. You're all super damn rad and I love you terribly.


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